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'.'r.nf'iiiA H*?»; :«'''i'' "'"!:'"' *^'^''«'^ ••''' 
" ■•^«t'''''^'r^»- >'••♦•• ••■ 



LECTURES 



ON 



MODEEI HISTORl 



... ,-^ .- .-♦l ».. A _,^ 



v/tf? .7 V 



'i" .' V 






INTRODUCTORY LECTURES 



ON 



MODERN HISTORY, 



DELIVERED IN LENT TERIM, MDCCCXLIL 



WITH 



THE INAUGURAL LECTURE 



DELIVERED IN DECEMBER, MDCCCXLI. 



BY THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D , 

u 

EEGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFOBD 

AND HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOl- 



FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION, 

WITH A^Jl«^-ArOE,^AND NOTES, 



»DV 



k'ROFESSO 



:ENRY RI^^c|PriA., 

ITERATURE IN THE VlSHVLRgfj/T^ 

ESTABLISHED 1875. 




F PENNSVtVANlA. 



PANY 



5 19 & 55 1 BROADWAY, 






Enteked, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S45^ by 
D. APPLETON & CO., 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Uniterl States for the Southern 
District of New York. 



m^ O, PUBIilC L.IBBAOT 



PREFACE 



THE AMERICAN EDITION 



Ii will be seen from Dr. Arnold's prefatory note, that these Lec- 
tures were printed almost exactly as they were delivered ; the date 
of the publication showing too that it was very soon after the de- 
livery of them. The Lectures are altogether of an introductory 
character, and it was the humble hope of the author, that in suc- 
ceeding years he would be enabled to devote othef courses to the 
farther examination of modern history^the subject which he re- 
garded as " of all others the most interesting, inasmuch as it in- 
cludes all questions of the deepest interest, relating not to humar 
things only, but to divine." The last lecture in this volume appears 
to have been delivered in the month of February, 1842, and it was 
upon the 12ih of June that Dr. Arnold's sudden death took place. 
The hope of future labors in. modern history was not to be fulfilled, 
and, in the words of his biographer, " the Introductory Lectures 
were to be invested with the solemnity of being the last words 
which he spoke in his beloved university." ' 

The design of these Lectures cannot be better described than by 
saying that they were intended to excite a greater interest in the 
study of history. Dr. Arnold's biographer thus speaks of them : 

" The course was purely and in every sense of the word '.'intro- 
ductory.' As the design of his first residence in Oxford was not to 
gain influence over the place so much as to familiarize himself with 
it after his long absence ; so the object of hi? first lectures was not 
so much to impart any historic^ Jcnowledge, as tq state his owp 
views of history, and to e^^cit^e aii interest in the study of it. The 



6 PREFACE TO THE 

Inaugural Lecture was a definition of history in geneical, and of 
modern history in particular ; the eight following lectuies were the 
natural expansion of this definition ; and the statement of such 
leading difficulties as he conceived a student would meet in the 
study first of the external life, and then of the internal life of 
nations. They were also strictly ' lectures ;' it is not an author 
and his readers, but the professor and his hearers, that are brought 
before us. Throughout the course, but especially in its various 
digressions, is to be discerned his usual anxiety — in this case 
almost as with a prophetic foreboding — to deliver his testimony be- 
fore it was too late, on the subjects next his heart ; which often 
imparts to them at once the defect and the interest of the out- 
pouring of his natural conversation." 

Of the spirit in which he should lecture with respect to the feel- 
ings of the place. Dr. Arnold remarks, in one of his letters, "The 
best rule, it seems to me, is to lecture exactly as I should write for 
the world at large ; to lecture, that is, neither hostilely nor cau- 
tiously, not seeking occasions of shocking men's favorite opinipns, 
yet neither in ;p,ny way humouring them, or declining to speak the 
truth, however opposed it may be to them." 

While the text of these Lectures is with scrupulous fidelity pre- 
served exactly as they were uttered and printed, it has seemed to 
me that their interest and value might be increased by the introduc- 
tion of some illustrative notes. There would indeed have been 
little need of any thing of the kind, had Arnold's life been prolonged 
till his professorial labors were completed ; but considering that 
these Lectures have been left to us as introductory to unaccom- 
plished after-courses, and that a lecturer is always under the neces- 
sity of bringing his subject in each lecture within narrow limits of 
time, I have thought that it was an occasion on which the addition 
of editorial notes would not be inappropriate. This tnought was 
perhaps first suggested to my mind by the knowledge that Dr 
Arnold's other works furnished passages which might be broughl 
into fit connection with the Lectures, and the belief that on farther 
examination with this special object ir view, I should be able to 
find more. My first and chief aim, therefore, in the notes I have 
introduced in this edition, has been to collect such parallel passages 
as would explain and illustrate the opinions and feelings which are 



AMERICAN EDITION. 7 

presented, either by direct statement or brief intimation, in tlio 
Lecmres. 

I have not however confined the notes to selections from Dr 
Arnold's writings, but have brought them from various sources, as 
far as I thought they would contribute to historical knowledge and 
truth, without encumbering the volume. It will readily be under- 
stood, that in lectures as copious as these are in historical and bio- 
fi^raphical allusions, the process of annotation might be carried on 
to an almost indefinite extent, but I have endeavored to limit the 
notes in a great measure to such as are of that suggestive character 
for which the Lectures themselves are distinguished — such as 
might encourage a love for the study of history and prompt to his- 
torical reading. In no department of literature has there been 
greater advance than in historical science during about the last 
twenty years, and it is a branch of education well deserving atten- 
tion, as one of the means of chastening that narrow and spurious 
nationality which is no more than unsubstantial national vanity — 
the substitute of ignorance and arrogance for genuine and rational 
and dutiful patriotism. 

In preparing this edition, I have had in view its use, not only for 
the general reader, but also as a text-book in education, especially 
in our college courses of study. It might be thought that this last 
purpose would require the introduction of many notes of an explan- 
atory kind for the information of young students ; but from such 
annotation I have in a great measure forborne, and purposely, for 
two reasons — because it must have become too copious in a work so 
full of historical allusions, and because the volume can be an appro- 
priate text-book only for advanced students, who have completed an 
elementary course of history. Besides, it is my belief that many a 
text-book is now-a-days overloaded with notes, to the positive in- 
jury' of education : such books seem to be prepared upon a pre- 
sumption that they are to be taught by men who are either ignorant 
or indolent, or both, and thus it is that the spirit of oral instruction 
is deadened by the practice of anticipating much that should be sup- 
plied by the teacher. The active intercourse between the mind 
Ihat teaches and the minds that are taught, which is essential to all 
true instruction, is often rendered dull by the use of books of such 
description. I have therefore endeavored to make the notes in this 



8 PREFACE TO THE 

voljime chiefly s» ^gestive, and only incidentally explanatory, and 
in doing so, it is n-y belief and hope that I have followed a princi])le 
on which the Ledures themselves were written. 

The introduction of this work as a text-book I regard as im- 
portant, because, at least so far as my information entitles me to 
speak, there is no book better calculated to inspire an interest in 
historical study. That it has this power over the minds of students 
I can say from ex;perience, which enables me also to add, that I 
have found it excellently suited to a course of college instruction. 
By intelligent and enterprising members of a class especially, i^- is 
studied as a text-hook with zeal and animation. 

In offering thi? volume for such use, I am not unaware of the 
difficulties arising from the fact that our college courses are both 
limited as to time and crowded with a considerable variety of 
studies — often perhaps too great a variety for sound education. 
The false academic ambition of making a Jisplay of many subjects 
has the inevitable effect of rendering instruction superficial in such 
studies as ought to be cultivated thoroughly. I should be sorry, 
therefore, to be contributing in any way to what may be regarded 
as an evil and an abuse — the injurious accumulation of subjects of 
study upon a couise that is limited in duration. It is in order to 
avoid this, that I venture here to suggest an expedient by which 
instruction in the^e Lectures may be accomplished advantageously 
and without embarrassment or conflict with other studies. The 
student may be made well acquainted with these Lectures by the 
process of making written abstracts of them, for which the work is, 
as I have found, peculiarly adapted. Let me, however, fortify this 
suggestion by something far more valuable than my own opinion or 
experience — the authority of Dr. Arnold himself as to the value of 
the method. It v^ ill be found in his correspondence that he earnesily 
advises the making of an abstract of some standard work in history ; 
besides the information gained, " the abstract itself," are his words. 
" practises you in condensing and giving in your own words wliat 
another has said ; a habit of great value, as it forces one to think 
about it, which extracting merely does not. It farther gives a 
brevity and simplicity to your language, two of the greatest merits 
which style can have." This method may, it appears to me, be 
oiade with advantage a substitute, to a considerable extent, for wh-^i 



AMERICAIS EDITION. 9 

is commonly called " original composition" of young writers. It 
avoids a danger which in that process has probably occurred to the 
minds of most persons who have had experience and are thought- 
fully engaged in that branch of education. The danger I allude to 
has been wisely and I think not too strongly spoken of as the " im- 
mense peril of introducing dishonesty into a pupil's mind, of teach- 
ing him to utter phrases which answer to nothing that is actually 
within him, and do not describe any thing that he has actually seen 
or imagined." {Lectures on National Education, by the Rev. Prof. 
Maurice, now of King's College, London.) 

A few words may be added here, for the general reader as well 
as the student. In order to receive just impressions from these 
Lectures it is important to bear in mind one or two of the peculiarly 
prominent traits of Dr. Arnold's intellectual, or rather moral charac- 
ter. The zeal to combat wrong — to withstand evil — engendered a 
polemical propensity, which leads him sometimes to speak as if he 
saw only evil in what may be mixed good and evil. His view of 
things, therefore, is occasionally both true and false, because one- 
sided and incomplete. Of chivalry, for instance, his mind appears 
to have dwelt only or chiefly on the dark side — the evils and abuses 
of it. ' Conservatism' was to him a symbol of evil, because he 
thought of it, not as preserving what is good, but a spirit of resist- 
ance to all change. 

Arbitrary power, in any of its forms, was odious to the mind of 
Arnold, not simply because it creates restraint and subjection, but 
inasmuch as it retards or prevents improvement of faculties given 
to be improved. " Half of our virtue," he exclaims, quoting Ho- 
mer's lines with a bold version, " Half of our virtue is torn away 
when a man becomes a slave, and the other half goes when he 
becomes a slave broke loose." The solemn and impassioned 
utterance of the great living poet, whom Arnold knew in personal 
converse, would not be too strong to express the feeling with which 
ho looked upon oppression by lawless dominion : 

" Never may from our souls one truth depart — 
That an accursed thing it is to gaze 
On prosperous tyrants with a dazzled eye." 

Liberty was prized by Arnold, not for its own sake — not as in itselJ 



10 PREFACE rO THE 

a good, but as a means — a condition of cultivation and improremeni, 
and it became in his eyes a worthless boon, an abused privilege 
whenever not dutifully employed for the good of man and ^he glory 
of God. 

Dr. Arnold's opinions must also often be judged of in their rela- 
tive connection. " It is my nature," he says, " always to attack 
that evil which seems to me most present." Accordingly, the evil 
he would most strenuously condemn in one place, or time, or state 
of things, might elsewhere cease to be the most dangerous, or in 
deed give place to even an opposite evil. This has an important 
bearing upon any application of his principles or opinions to various 
political or social conditions ; but be the thoughts and words what 
they may, there is assurance that they come from a man distin- 
guished for that straightforwardness of purpose and of speech 
which everywhere and always is a virtue — 

fv navra 6e v6fxov evdvy^oxraog av?/f ■!rpo<p{p£i, 

irapa rvpavviSi, %W7r(5rav b ^aj3pos arpaTds, 

Xwrav irdXiv ol Go(pol rjjpfwirt. Pyth. II. 

Having spoken of applications of Dr. Arnold's thoughts, I wish 
to add, that there could be no more unworthy tribute rendered to 
him than either the careless, unreflecting adoption of his views, or 
the citing his words as a sanction for opinions that may in other 
minds be no more than prejudices — formed in ignorance or indif- 
ference, and held without earnestness or candor. Such is not the 
lesson to be learned from the character of one of whom I may say 
that he could not draw a happy breath in the presence of falsehood, 
and the master-passion of whose spirit was the love of Law and of 
Truth. 

In the arrangement of this volume for the press, I have placed 
the notes of this edition at the end of each lecture, so that they 
may not intrude at all upon the text of the lectures, which differ in 
jio other particular from the original, than merely the insertion of 
numbers for reference to the notes, and a correction of a slight 
error in a reference to an authority in Lecture VI. To prevent 
any possibility of error, let it be understood that Dr. Arnold's own 
notes, few in number, are printed as foot-notes, as in the original 
edition. The notes of this edition are in all cases referred to bv 
numbers, and are placed after each lecture. 



AMERICAN EDITION. 11 

For several valuable suggestions and references, I am indebted 
to the learning and the kindness of the Rev. Professor George 
Allen, of Delav^^are College. I mention my obligation, because 
otherwise silence would bring me the self-reproach for something 
like unreal display. There is a pleasure too in making such an 
acknowledgment, especially when, in connection with this volume, 
it is to one whose earnest scholarship is kindred to that of Arnold 
himself in several respects, and chiefly in this — the not common 
combination of philological accuracy witn cultivation of modeiti 
history and literature. 

II. R. . 

University of Pennsylvania, 
PHibADXLPHiA, Aprii 2S, 18^5. 



TO THE REVEREND 

EDWARD HAWKINS, D. D., 

PROVOST OF ORIEL COLLEGE, 

ETC., ETC., ETC., 

THESE LECTURES, 

TlIK FIRST FRUITS OF A RENEWED CONNEXION WITH THE UNIVERSITY 
AND ITS -RESIDENT MEMBERS, 

ARE INSCRIBED WITH TRUE RESPECT AND REGARD, 

BY Ills SINCERELY ATTACHED FRIEND, 

THE AUTHOH. 



The following Lectures are printed almost exactly as 
tbey were delivered. They were written with the ex- 
pectation that they w^ould be read in a room to a very 
limited audience ; which may explain why the style in 
some instances is more colloquial than became the circum- 
stances under which they were delivered actually. 

liugby, May 5t7t, 1842. 



CONTENTS. 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

TAfiB 

Flistory often underrated. — It cannot be appreciated justly at 
once. — rDefinition of history. — The biography of a society. 
— Properly, the biography of a nation. — And hence, gene- 
rally, of a government. — But not always so in reality. — ^A 
nation's life is twofold, partly external and partly internal. 
— The internal life determined by its end. — This end moral 
rather than physical. — Because a nation is a sovereign 
society ; and must therefore be cognizant of moral ends ; 
as it controls all actions. — End of a nation's life, its highest 
happiness. — This is the fruit of laws and institutions ; which 
together form its constitution ; executive, legislative, and 
judicial. — Institutions for public instruction. — Institutions 
relating to property. — Their great importance. — Instances 
given : primogeniture, entails, commercial laws, (fee- 
Other elements affecting national life. — Conclusion : the 
greatness of history. — ^What constitutes modern history 1 — 
It treats of nations still living. — ^When was the English 
nation born] — National personality depends on four great 
elements. — Peculiarity of modern history. — Its element of 
the German race. — Spread of this race. — Is modern history 
the last history? — ^Why it seems likely to be so. — Impor- 
tance of its being so. — Value of the lessons of history.— 
Conclusion 25 

(Notes , . 51] 



18 CONTENTS. 



APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 



F&GI 



Theory of the perfect state. — The supreme society must be 
moral. — ^Why the moral theory is objected to. — What 
should be the bond of societies. — Union of action rather 
than of belief. — ^When is government national 1 — Govern- 
ment speaking the voice of the nation may choose its own 
national law. — Churches may infringe individual rights. — 
Excommunication is a punishment. — All centralization has 
its dangers. — Obedience to Christian law the way to arrive 
at Christian faith. — But the end is not to be made the be- 
ginning. — What the real difficulty of the question is. — 
Agreement of the moral theory of a state with the true 
theory of the church. — The one seems to require the other. 
— Notice of some special objections. — The objections as- 
sume as true what is condemned by high authorities. — 
Confusion as to what is properly " secular." — Excommuni- 
cation a secular punishment. — In what sense our Lord's 
kingdom was not a kingdom of this world. — Conclusion . 64 

[Notes B4j 



LECTURE L 

Introductory remarks. — Contrast between ancient and modern 
history. — Extreme voluminousness of modern history. — 
Some one particular portion to be selected. — First study it 
in a contemporary historian. — Or in those of more than one 
nation. — Other authorities next to be consulted. — Advan- 
tages of the university libraries. — Collections of tiea^ties to 
be consulted. — Rymer's Fcedera. — Also collections of laws, 
&c. — Their value to the historical student — Letters or other 
writings of great men. — Mfscellaneous literature. — How 
such reading may be made practicable, by reading with a 
view to our particular object. — And yet will not be super- 
ficial. — ^What reading is superficial and misleading, — Re- 



CONTENTS. 1 9 

PASS 

markable example of misquotation from Mosheim's Ecclesi- 
astical History. — ^Which quotation has inadvertently been 
given by several successive writers. — Showing- the danger 
of quoting at second-hand. — Still a knowledge of past times 
is insufficient and even incomplete in itself, without a lively 
knowledge of the present. — Good effects of a knowledge of 
the present, and generally of more than one period. — To 
prevent our wrongly valuing one period. — Especially to 
prevent us from decrying our own. — Recapitulation. — Sub- 
ject of the ensuing lecture . . . . . .01 

[Notes , 114] 



LECTURE II. 

Two periods of modern history. — Before and after the six- 
teenth century. — The history of the first is simpler, of the 
second more complicated. — Historians of the first period. 
— Bede. — Study of language in history. — Importance of 
good habits of translation. — Difference of the classical and 
later Latin. — Trustworthiness of historians. — Question as to 
Bede's accounts of miracles. — Difference between wonders 
and miracles. — Alleged miracles by far the most difficult. — 
Their external testimony defective ; and also their internal 
evidence. — They are generally to be disbelieved. — Perhaps 
with some exceptions. — But even if true they cannot sanc- 
tion all the opinions held by those who work them. — Ques- 
tions belonging to the thirteenth century. — Questions in the 
study of the Chronicles. — Philip de Comines. — i^^vantages 
of previous classical study. — Greater difficulty in the study 
of the middle ages. — Importance of genealogies. — We must 
look backwards and forwards. — Examples given. — Contest 
for the throne of Naples. — Peculiar interest of the period 
described by Philip de Comines. — Contrast between him 
and Herodotus. — Conclusion . . . . . .119 

[Notes . 142] 



80 CONTENTS. 

LECTURE III. 

Magnitude of modern history. — Its different subjects of study. 
— External history. — Geography. — Common notions of ge- 
ography. — How it should be studied. — Examples of its im- 
portance. — Geography of Italy. — Tendency of the last three 
centuries. — Small states swallowed up by great ones. — 
Excesses of this tendency. — First, Spain. — Spain dangerous 
to Europe. — The Austro-Spanish power. — France danger- 
ous to Europe. — Ascendency of England in 1763. — France 
under Na,poleon. — The dominion of Napoleon. — Its won- 
derful overthrow. — These are merely external struggles ; 
although often mixed up with struggles of principle. — The 
questions contained in them are economical and military. — 
Economical questions. — Difficulty of supporting a war. — 
Temptation to raise money by loans. — Evils of the borrow- 
ing system. — Examples of financial difficulties in France 
and in England. — Are such evils unavoidable ? — Conclusion 147 

'Notes 170] 

LECTURE IV. 

Difficulty of speaking on others' professions. — How far it may 
be done with propriety. — And where we must be ignorant. 
— Whose campaigns are worth studying. — Discipline must 
conquer enthusiasm. — ^Will some races always beat others ? 
— Not of necessity. — Mischiefs of irregular warfare. — 
Irregular warfare not justified by the accident of our coun- 
try's being invaded. — Certain laws of war considered. — 
Plundering a town taken by storm. — General Napier's judg- 
ment on thi^ point. — Of the right of blockade. — Siege of 
Genoa in 1800. — Importance of amending bad laws. — Of 
wrong done in going to war. — Suspicion begets suspicion. — 
Understanding of military operations. — ^What leads to battles 
in particular places. — Great lines of road often change- 
Changes in roads and fortresses. — Mountain warfare. — 
Conclusion ... ..... 181 

[Notes . , 207] 



CONTEINTS, 21 



LECTURE Y. 



PA OS 



Transition to internal history. — General divisions of the sub- 
ject. — Question of many and few. — What is a popular party 1 
— What is meant by the few and the many ] — ^What is the 
good of a nation 1 — Principles intermixed with one another. 
— Example of Hume. — ^What is the party of the movement 1 
— Not always a popular party. — Parties changed by time. — 
Example of the Guelfs and Ghibelins. — Dread of extinct 
evils ; or of such as are the weaker. — Analysis of internal 
history. — Period of religious movement. — Parties in Eng- 
land first appear in the reign of Elizabeth. — Three parties. 
— The party of the established church. — The party of the 
puritans. — Party of the Romanists. — Ability of Elizabeth. — 
Her great popularity . . . . . . .219 

[Notes . . . * . * . . . . 244] 

LECTURE VL 

Church questions are often political rather than religious , 
inasmuch as they have been questions of government. — 
Questions of the priesthood are religious, but were not dis- 
cussed in England. — Church questions in England political, 
as the church and state were one. — Yet the church ques- 
tions were in form not political till the reign of James I. — 
Causes of the political movement. — Growth of the House 
of Commons, — Its growth owing to that of the nation. — 
The intellectual movement stood aloof from the political, 
being regarded by it with suspicion, especially by the re- 
ligious movement. — ^Why the purely intellectual movement 
inclined to the party upholding church authority ; submitting 
to it insincerely. — State of the contest hitherto. — It might 
have been delayed but not prevented. — Change wrought in 
the popular party ; both in its religious party and in its politi- 
cal. — Elements of the antipopular party. — Nobleness of its 
best members. — Lord Falkland.— Its other members.— 
Those who are called meek and peaceable. — They have no 



22 CONTENTS. 

rAoe 
temptation to be otherwise, and are not to be admired. — 

Other opponents of puritanism, some better and others 
worse. — Lord Falkland's character of these. — Results of 
the civil war. — Altered relations of church and state. — 
Conclusion . ... . . . . ,261 

INoTES . . ... . . . ' . . 288. 



LECTURE VIL 

England after the Revolution. — Parties supporting or dis- 
liking it, — The popular party. — Two divisions of the oppo- 
site party. — One of these maintained the Revolution because 
it had changed so little ; yet the advantages involved in it 
were both great and lasting. — Treatment of Ireland by the 
popular party. — Feelings of the opposite party towards 
France. — The poorer class ufifriendly 'to the Revolution. 
— Parties in the eighteenth century. — Triumph of the popu- 
lar party. — What it neglected to accomplish. — New form of 
English party. — First years of George the Third's reign. — 
— The House of Commons antipopular, — How this came to 
take place. — New popular party out of parliament. — The 
periodical press. — Separation of politics from morals. — 
Letters of Junius. — American war. — War of the French 
Revolution. — Consistency of parties. — General view of the 
movement. — Omissions of both parties. — Our judgment oi 
them affected by our judgment of earlier times. — Conclusior 315 

'Notes 340j 



LECTURE VIII. 

Credibility of history. — History alone tells us of the pas! 
— Whether a narrative is meant to be history. — Exami)l3 
from Sir Walter Scott's works. — A narrative may aim at 
truth and yet be careless of fact. — Criteria of an historical 
narrative. — Ecclesiastical biographies. — Credibility of wri- 
tings clearly historical. — Contemporary writers often over- 
rated. — The narrative of actual witnesses. — Witnesses more 



CONTENTS. 23 

PAGH 

©r less perfect. — The principal actor a perfect witness, in 
knowledge though not in honesty. — All history credible up 
to a certain point. — An earnest craving after truth the great 
qualification of an historian. — Truth when sought may be 
found. — The craving after truth in a reader enables him to 
estimate truth in a writer. — Examination of an historian's 
credibility, both as to style and matter. — As to the authori- 
ties referred to. — As a military historian. — As a political 
historian. — False notions of impartiality. — Objection to his- 
tory generally. — Uncertainty as to political questions. — 
Their laws not really uncertain, although often thought to 
be so. — Certain principles are clearly good. — Yet can his- 
tory profit us 1 — Or are we bound by an unchangeable fate 1 
— Can we undo the effect of the past *? — Supposed case in 
the French Revolution. — The effects of the past partly re- 
versible. — Conclusion of the Lectures. — Proposed subject 
of the next course. — Conclusion ..... 367 
[Notes 394] 

[Appendix I. — On Dr. Arnold's character as an Historian, 
from the ' Life and Correspondence' . . . 413] 

[Appendix IL — On historical instruction, from Dr. Arnold's 
account of ' Rugby School' .... 41U] 

[Appendix IIL — On TranslatiDn ... . 423] 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 



It has been often remarked, that when a stranger enters 
St. Peter's for the first time, the immediate impression is one 
of disappointment ; the building looks smaller than he ex- 
pected to find it. So it is with the first sight of mountains ; 
their summits never seem so near the clouds as we had hoped 
to see them. But a closer acquaintance with these, and with 
other grand or beautiful objects, convinces us that our first 
impression arose not from the want of greatness in what we 
saw, but from a want of comprehensiveness in ourselves to 
grasp it. What we saw was not all that existed ; but all 
that our untaught glance could master. As we know it bet- 
ter, it remains the same, but we rise more nearly to its level : 
our greater admiration is but the proof that we are become 
able to appreciate it more truly. (1) 

Something of this sort takes place, I think, in our unin- 
structed impressions of history. We are not inclined to rate 
very highly the qualifications required either in the student 
or in the writer of it. It seems to demand little more than 
memory in the one, and honesty and diligence in the other. 
It is, we say, only a record of facts ; and such a work seems 
to offer no field for the imagination, or for the judgment, or 
for our powers of reasoning. History is but time's follower ; 
she does not pretend to discover, but merely to register what 
time has brought to light already. Eminent men have been 
known to hold this language ; Johnson, whose fondness for 
Biography might have taught him to judge more truly, enter- 

3 



86 INAUGUliAL LECTURE. 

tainea little respect for history. We cannot comprehend 
what we have never studied, and history must be content to 
share in the common portion of every thing great and good ; 
it must be undervalued by a hasty observer. 

If I were to attempt to institute a comparison between the 
excellencies of history and those of other studies, I should be 
falling into the very fault which I have been just noticing; 
I might be doing injustice to other branches of knowledge, 
only because I had no sufficient acquaintance with them. 
But I may be allowed to claim for history, not any particular 
rank, whether high or low, as compared with other studies, 
but simply that credit should be given it for containing more 
than a superficial view of it can appreciate ; for having trea- 
sures, neither lying on the surface nor immediately below the 
surface, — treasures not to be obtained without much labor, 
yet rewarding the hardest labor amply. 

To these treasures it is my business to endeavor to point 
out the way. A Professor of history, if I understand his 
duties rightly, has two principal objects ; he must try to ac- 
quaint his hearers with the nature and value of the treasure 
for which they are searching ; and, secondly, he must try to 
show them the best and speediest method of discovering and 
extracting it. The first of these two things may be done 
once for all ; but the second must be his habitual employ- 
ment, the business of his professorial life. I am now, there- 
fore, not to attempt to enter upon the second, but to bestow 
my attention upon the first : I must try to state what is the 
treasure to be found by a search into the records of history ; 
if we cannot be satisfied that it is abundant and most valua- 
ble, we shall care little to be instructed how to gain it. 

In speaking of history generally, I may appear to be fbr- 
g'etting that my proper subject is more limited j that it is not 
history simply, but modern history. I am perfectly aware 
of this, and hope not to forget it in my practice : but still ai 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 27 

;he outset 1 must trace the stream from its source; 1 must 
ask you to remain with me awhile on the high ground, where 
the waters, which are hereafter to form the separate streams 
of ancient and modern history, lie as yet undistinguished in 
their common parent lake. I must speak of history in gene- 
ral, in order to understand the better the character of any 
one of its particular species. 

The general idea of history seems to be, that it is the 
biography of a society. It does not appear to me to be his- 
tory at all, but simply biography, unless it finds in the per- 
sons who are its subject something of a common purpose, the 
accomplishment of which is the object of their common life. 
History is to this common life of many, what biography is to 
the life of an individual. ..Take, for instance, any common 
family, and its members are soon so scattered from one an- 
other, and are engaged in such different pursuits, that al- 
though it is possible to write the biography of each individual, 
yet there can be no such thing, properly speaking, as the 
history of the family. But suppose all the members to be 
thrown .ogether in one place, amidst strangers or savages, 
and there immediately becomes a common life, — a unity of 
action, — interest, and purpose; distinct from others around 
them, which renders them at once a fit subject of history. 
Perhaps I ought not to press the word "purpose;" because 
purpose implies consciousness in the purposer, and a society 
may exist without being fully conscious of its own business 
as a society. But whether consciously or not, every society 
— so much is implied in the very word — must have in it 
something of community ; and so far as the members of it 
are members, so far as they are each incomplete parts, but 
taken together form a whole, so far, it appears to me, their 
'oint life is the proper subject of history. 
Accordingly we find the term history often applied to small 



£8 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

and subordinate societies. We speak of the history of litO' 
rary or scientific societies ; we have histories of commercia 
bodies ; histories of religious orders ; histories of universities. 
In all these cases, history has to do with that which the sev- 
eral members of eacii of these societies have in common ; it 
is, as I said, the biography of their common life. And it 
seems to me that it could not perform its office, if it had no 
distinct notion in what this common life consisted. 

But if the life of every society belongs to history, much 
more does the life of that highest and sovereign society which 
we call a state or a nation. And this in fact is considered 
the proper subject of history ; insomuch that if we speak of 
it simply, without any qualifying epithet, we understand by 
it, not the biography of any subordinate society, but of some 
one or more of the great national societies of the human 
race, whatever political form their bond of connection may 
assume. And thus we get a somewhat stricter definition of 
history properly so called ; we may describe it not simply 
as the biography of a society, but as the biography of a po- 
litical society or commonwealth. 

Now in a commonwealth or state, that common life which 
i have ventured to call the proper subject of history, finds its 
natural expression in those who are invested with the state's 
government. Here we have the varied elements which exist 
in the body of a li&tion, reduced as it were to an intelligible 
unity : the state appears to have a personal existence in its 
government. And where that government is lodged in the 
hands of a single individual, then biography and history 
seem to melt into one another, inasmuch as one and the same 
person combines in himself his life as an individual, and the 
common life of his nation. 

That common life, then, which we could not find repre- 
sented by any private members of the state, is brought to a 
head, as it were, and exhibited intelligibly and visibly in the 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 29 

government. And thus history has generally taken govern- 
ments as the proper representatives of nations; it has re- 
corded the actions and fortunes of kings or national councils, 
and has so appeared to fulfil its appointed duty, that of re- 
cording the life of a commonwealth. Nor is this theoreti- 
cally other than true ; the idea of government is no doubt 
that it should represent the person of the state, desiring those 
ends, and contriving those means to compass them, which the 
state itself, if it could act for itself, ought to desire and to 
contrive. But practically and really this has not been so; 
governments have less represented the state than themselves ; 
the individual life has so predominated in them over the com 
raon life, that what in theory is history, because it is record- 
ing the actions of a government, and the government repre- 
sents the nation, becomes in fact no more than biography ; it 
does but record the passions and actions of an individual, 
who is abusing the state's name for the purposes of selfish, 
rather than public good. 

We see, then, in practice how history has been beguiled, 
so to speak, from its proper business, and has ceased to de- 
scribe the life of a commonwealth. For, taking governments 
as the representatives of commonwealths, which in idea they 
are, history has watched their features, as if from them might 
be drawn the portrait of their respective nations. But as in 
this she has been deceived, so her portraits were necessarily 
unlike what they were intended to represent ; they were not 
portraits of the commonwealth, but of individuals. 

Again, the life of a commonwealth, like that of an indi- 
vidual, has two parts ; it is partly external, and partly inter- 
nal. Its external life is seen in its dealings with other 
jjommonwealths ; its internal life, in its dealings with itself. 
Now in the former of these, government must ever be, in a 
certain degree, the representative of the nation ; there must 
here be a' community of interest, at least up to a certain 



so INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

point, and something also of a community of feeling. If a 
government be overthrown by a foreign enemy, the nation 
shares in the evils of the conquest, and in the shame of the 
defeat ; if it be victorious, the nation, even if not enriched 
with the spoils, is yet proud to claim its portion of the glory. 
And thus, in describing a government's external life, that is, 
its dealings with other governments, history has remained, 
and could not but remain, true to its proper subject : for in 
foreign war, the government must represent more than its in- 
dividual self; here it really must act and suffer, not alto- 
i>:ether, but yet to a considerable degree, for and with the 
nation. 

I have assumed that the external life of a state is seen in 
little else than in its wars ; and this I fear is true, with 
scarcely any qualification. A state acting out of itself, ia 
mostly either repelling violence, or exercising it upon others ; 
the friendly intercourse between nation and nation is for the 
most part negative. A nation's external life, then, is dis- 
played in its wars, and here history has been sufficiently 
busy : the wars of the human race have been recorded, when 
the memory of every thing else has perished. Nor is this to 
be wondered at ; for the external life of nations, as of indi- 
viduals, is at once the most easily known and the most gene- 
rally interesting. Action, in the common sense of the word, 
is intelligible to every one ; its effects are visible and sensi- 
ble ; in itself, from its necessary connection with outward 
nature, it is often highly picturesque, while the qualities dis- 
played in it are some of those which, by an irresistible in- 
stinct, we are most led to admire. Ability in the adaptation 
of means to ends, courage, endurance, and perseverance, the 
complete conquest cv^er some of tne most universal weak- 
nesses of our nature, the victory over some of its most pow- 
erful temptations, — these are qualities displayed in action, 
and particularly in war. And it is our deep sympathy with 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 31 

these qualities, much more than any fondness for scenes of 
horror and blood, which has made descriptions of battles, 
whether in poetry or history, so generally attractive. He 
who can read these without interest, differs, I am inclined to 
think, from the mass of mankind rather for the worse than 
for the better ; he rather wants some noble qualities which 
other men have, than possesses some which other men want. 

But' still we have another life besides that of outward 
action ; and it is this inward life after all which determines 
the character of the actions and of the man. And how eagerly 
do we desire in those great men whose actions fill so large a 
space in history, to know not only what they did but what 
they were : how much do we prize their letters or their re- 
corded words, and not least such words as are uttered in their 
most private moments, which enable us to look as it were 
into the very nature of that mind, whose distant effects we 
know to be so marvellous ! But a nation has its inward life 
no less than an individual, and from this its outward life also 
is characterized. For what does a nation effect by war, but 
either the securing of its existence, or the increasing of its 
power ? We honor the heroism shown in accomplishing 
these objects; but power, nay even existence, are not ultimate 
ends ; the question may be asked of every created being why 
he should live at all, and no satisfactory answer can be given, 
if his life does not, by doing God's will consciously or uncon- 
sciously, tend to God's glory and to the good of his brethren. 
And if a nation's annals contain the re'cord of deeds ever so 
heroic, done in defence of the national freedom of existence, 
still we may require that the freedom or the life so bravely 
maintained should be also employed for worthy purposes ; or 
else even the names of Thermopylse and of Morgarten be- 
come in after years a reproach rather than a glory. (2) 

Turning then to regard the inner life of a nation, we 
cannot but see that here, as in the life of an individual, it is 



32 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

determined by the nature of its ultimate end. What is a 
nation's main object, is therefore a question which must be 
asked, before we can answer whether its inner life, and con- 
sequently its outward life also, which depends upon the inner 
life, is to be called good or evil. Now it does not seem easy 
to conceive that a nation can have any other object than that 
which is the highest object of every individual in it; if it can, 
then the attribute of sovereignty which is inseparable from 
nationality becomes the dominion of an evil principle. For 
suppose, for instance, that a nation as such is not cognizant 
of the notions of justice and humanity, but that its highest 
object is wealth, or dominion, or security. It then follows 
that the sovereign power in human life, which can influence 
the minds and compel the actions of us all, is a power alto- 
gether unmoral ; and if unmoral, and yet commanding the 
actions of moral beings, then evil. Again, if being cognizant 
of the notions of justice and humanity it deliberately prefers 
other objects to them, then here is the dominion of an evil 
principle still more clearly. But if it be cognizant of them 
and appreciates them rightly, thermit must see that they are 
more to be followed than any objects of outward advantage ; 
then it acknowledges moral ends as a higher good than phys- 
ical ends, and thus, as we said, agrees with every good indi- 
vidual man in its estimate of the highest object of national nc 
less than of individual life. 

It is sometimes urged, that although this be true of individ- 
uals, yet it is not true of every society ; that we constantly 
see instances of the contrary ; that, for example, the highest 
object of the Royal Society as a society is the advancement 
of science, although to the individuals of that society a moral 
and religious object would be incomparably of higher value. 
Why then may not tlie highest object of a nation, as such, be 
self-defence, or wealth, oi any other outward good, although 
every individual of the nation puts a moral object before any 



INAUGURAL LECTLRi: 33 

mere external benefits. The answer to this is simply be- 
cause a nation is a sovereign society, and it is something 
monstrous that the ultimate power in human life should be 
destitute of a sense of right and v/rong. For there being a 
right and a wrong in all or almost all our actions, the power 
which can comr^nd or forbid these actions without an appeal 
to any human tribunal higher than itself, must surely have a 
sense not only of the right or wrong of this particular action 
now commanded or forbidden, but generally of the compara- 
tive value of different ends, and thus of the highest end of all ; 
lest perchance while commanding what is in itself good, it 
may command it at a time or in a degree to interfere with 
s(5me higher good ; and then it is in fact commanding evil. 
And that the power of government is thus extensive and 
sovereign seems admitted, not only historically, inasmuch as 
no known limits to it have ever been affixed, nor indeed can 
be, without contradiction, but also by our common sense and 
language, which feels and expresses that government does, 
and may, and ought to interpose in a great variety of matters ; 
various for instance, as education and the raising of a rev- 
enue, and the making of war or peace ; matters which it 
would be very difficult to class together under any one com- 
mon head, except such a^ i nave assigned as the end of po- 
litical society, the highest good, namely, of the whole society 
or nation. And our common notions of the difference be- 
tween a government and a police, between a government and 
an army, are alone sufficient to show the fallacy of the at- 
tempted comparison. It is the ultimate object of a police to 
provide for the security of our bodies and goods against vio- 
lence at home, as it is the object of an army to secure them 
against violence from without. Policemen and soldiers have 
individually another and a higher object ; but the societies, 
if I m.ay so call them, the institutions of a police and an army, 
have not. And who does not see that for this very reason 



S4 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

the police and the army are not sovereign societies, but 
essentially subordinate ; that because they are not cognizant 
of moral ends, therefore they are incapable of directing men's 
conduct in the last resort ; and that therefore they are them- 
selves subject to a higher power, namely, that of the govern- 
ment, the representative of the national 1^ ? If neither is 
the government cognizant of moral ends, then it too must be 
subject to some higher power, which is a contradiction in 
terms ; or else, as I said before, it cannot surely be the ordi- 
nance of God ; and if not, can it be otherwise than evil ? 

Perhaps it was hardly necessary to dwell so long on this 
point before my present hearers ; yet the opposite doctrine to 
that which I have been asserting has been maintained, sirice 
Warburton, by names deserving of no common respect ; and 
what seems to me the truth, was necessary to be stated, be- 
cause on it depends our whole view of history, so far as his- 
tory is more than a mere record of wars. In wars no doubt 
the end sought is no more than a nation's security or power ; 
in other words, that she may develop her internal life at 
all, or develop it with vigour. But we must recognise some 
worthy end for the life thus preserved, or strengthened ; 
otherwise it is but given in vain. 

That end appears to be the promoting and securing a na- 
tion's highest happiness ; so we must express it in its most 
general formula ; but under the most favorable combination 
of circumstances, this same end is conceived and expressed 
more purely, as the setting forth God's glory by doing His 
appointed work. And that work for a nation seems to imply 
not only the greatest possible perfecting of the natures of its 
individual members, but also the perfecting of all those acts 
which are done by the nation collectively, or by the govern- 
ment standing in its place, and faithfully representing it. 
For that conceivably a nation may have duties of vast im 
portance to perform in its national capacity, and which cannot 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 35 

he effected by its individual members, however excellent- 
duties of its external life of a very different sort from ordinary 
wars, even when justifiable, seems to follow at once from the 
consideration that every single state is but a member of a 
greater body ; that is, immediately, of the great body of or- 
ganized states throughout the world, and still farther, of the 
universal family of mankind, and that it is a member of both 
accordincr to the will of God. 

But perfection in outward life is the fruit of perfection in 
the life within us. And a nation's inner life consists in its 
action upon and within itself. Now in order to the perfecting 
of itself, it must follow certain principles, and acquire certain 
habits ; in other words, it must have its laws and institutions 
adapted to the accomplishment of its great end. On these 
the characters of its people so mainly depend, that if these 
be faulty, the whole inner liie is corrupted ; if these be good, 
it is likely to go on healthfully. The history then of a nation's 
internal life, is the history of its institutions and of its laws, 
both of which are included under the term laws, in the com- 
prehensive sense of that word as used by the Greeks ; (3) 
but for us it is most convenient to distinguish them. Let us 
consider how much these two terms include. 

I would first say that by institutions I wish to understand 
such offices, orders of men, public bodies, settlements of prop- 
erty, customs, or regulations, concerning matters of general 
usage, as do not owe their existence to any express law or 
law^s, but having originated in various ways at a period of 
remote antiquity, are already parts of the national system, at 
the very beginning of our historical view of it, and are re- 
cognised by all actual laws, as being themselves a kind of 
primary condition on which all recorded legislation proceeds. 
And I would confine the term laws to the enactments of a 
known legislative power, at a certain known period. 

Here then, in the institutions and legislation of a country, 



56 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

the principles, and rules, and influencing powers of its inter- 
nal life, we have one of the noblest subjects of history. 
For by one or both of these, generally from institutions modi 
fied by laws, comes in the first place what we call the consti- 
tution of a country ; that is, to speak generally, its peculiar 
arrangement of the executive,'legislative, and judicial power? 
of government. The bearing of the constitution of a country 
upon its internal life is twofold ; direct and indirect. Foi 
example, the effect of any particular arrangement of the 
judicial power is seen directly in the greater or less purity 
with which justice is administered ; but there is a farthei 
effect, and one of the highest importance, in its furnishing to 
a greater or less portion of the nation one of the best means 
of moral and intellectual culture, the opportunity, namely, 
of exercising the functions of a judge. I mean, that to ac- 
custom a number of persons to the intellectual exercise of 
attending to, and weighing, and comparing evidence, and to 
the moral exercise of being placed in a high and responsible 
situation, invested with one of God's own attributes, that of 
judgment, and having to determine with authority between 
truth and falsehood, right and wrong, is to furnish them with 
very high means of moral and intellectual culture ; in other 
words, it is providing them with one of the highest kinds of 
education. And thus a judicial constitution may secure a 
pure administration of justice, and yet fail as an engine of 
national cultivation, when it is vested in the hands of a small 
body of professional men, like the old French parliaments. 
While, on the other hand, it may communicate the judicial 
office very widely, as by our system of juries, and thus may 
educate, if I may so speak, a veiy large portion of the nation, 
but yet may not succeed in obtaining the greatest certainty 
of just legal decisions. I do not mean that our jury systenc 
does not succeed, but it is conceivable that it should not. 
Bo in the same way different arrangements of the executi re 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 37 

and legislative powers should be always regarded in this 
twofold aspect ; as effecting their direct objects, good govern, 
ment and good legislation ; and as educating the nation more 
or less extensively, by affording to a greater or less numbei 
of persons practical lessons in governing and legislating. 

I have noticed the political constitution of a country, tho 
first of all its institutions, because it is the one which from 
its prominence first attracts our notice. Others, however, 
although less conspicuous, have an influence not less impor- 
tant. Of these are all such institutions or laws as relate to 
public instruction in the widest sense, whether of the young, 
or of persons of all ages. There are certain principles which 
the State wishes to inculcate on all its members, certain 
habits which it wishes to form, a certain kind and degree of 
knowledge which it wishes to communicate ; such, namely, 
as bear more or less immediately on its great end, its own in- 
tellectual and moral perfection, arising out of the perfection of 
its several members. Now as far as this instruction, using 
the term again in its widest sense, and including under it the 
formation of habits, as far as this instruction is applied to the 
young, it goes under the name of education ; as far as it 
regards persons of all ages, it generally takes the form of 
religion. Even in heathen countries, where direct teaching 
was no part of the business of the ministers of religion, still 
the solemn festivals, the games, the sacrifices, the systems 
of divination, naj--, the very temples themselves, had an un- 
doubted moral effect on the people, whether for good or for 
evil, and were designed to have it ; so that in the larger sense 
already claimed for the word, they may be called a sort of 
public instruction. In Christian countries, religion at once 
inculcates truths and forms habits ; the first, by what I may 
be allowed to call prophesying or direct teaching ; the second, 
by this also, and farther by the ritual and social agency of 
fhe Church. Nor need I add one word to my present audi- 



gS INATTGURAL LECTURE. 

ence to impress the vast importance of this one of a nation's 
institutions. 

Neither let it be thought an abrupt or painful descent, if, 
from the mention of public instruction in its very highest 
form, I pass to another class of institutions and laws, which 
some may look upon as regarding only the lowest part of a 
state's external life ; those institutions and laws, I mean, 
which affect the acquisition and the distribution of property. I 
grant that the way in which economical questions are some- 
times discussed may create a prejudice against the study of 
them ; excusably, it may be, yet not over reasonably. For 
in economical works, the economical end alone is regarded, 
without taking account of its bearings upon the higher or 
political end to which it should minister. But surely this, as 
it would be very faulty in a statesman, is not at all faulty in 
one who professes only to be an economist ; it does not seem 
to me that, in discussing any subordinate science, its relations 
with the supreme or architectonical science fall properly 
under our consideration. (4) We are but to send in our 
report of the facts within our special subject of inquiry ; to 
legislate upon this report belongs to a higher department. It 
is very useful to consider economical questions in a purely 
economical point of viev/, in order to discover the truth re- 
specting them merely as points of economy ; although it by 
no means follows that what is expedient economically, is ex- 
pedient also politically, because it may well be that another 
end rather than the economical may best further the attain- 
ment of the great end of the commonwealth. But no maja 
who thinks seriously about it, can doubt the vast moral im- 
portance of institutions and laws relating to property. It has 
been said that the possession of property implies education ; 
iliat is, that it calls forth and exercises so many valuable 
qualities, — forethought, love- of order, justice, beneficence, 
and wisdom in the use of power, — that he who possesses it 



INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 39 

cannot live in the extreme of ignorance or brutality : he has 
learnt unavoidably some of the higher lessons of humanity. 
It is at least certain that the utter want of property offers 
obstacles to the moral and intellectual education of persons 
labouring under it, such as no book teaching can in ordinary 
circumstances overcome. Laws therefore which affect, di- 
rectly or indirectly, the distribution of property, affect also a 
nation's internal life very deeply. It is not a matter of in- 
difference whether the laws of inheritance direct the equal 
distribution of a man's property among all his children, or 
whether they establish a right of primogeniture ; whether 
they fix the principle of succession independently of individ- 
ual discretion, or whether they leave a man the power of 
disposing of his property by will, according to his own plea- 
sure. Nor, again, is it indifferent whether the law favors 
the stability of property, or its rapid circulation ; whether it 
encourages entails, or forbids them ; whether it determines 
that land held in mortmain is an advantage or an evil. I 
might allude to the importance of commercial laws, whether 
for good or for evil ; and to that fruitful source of political 
disputes in modern times, the amount and character of a 
country's taxation. But it is enough to have just noticed 
these points, in order to show that economical questions, or 
such as relate to wealth or property, demand the careful at- 
tention of the historian, inasmuch as they influence most 
powerfully a nation's moral and political condition, that is, 
in the highest sense of the terms, its welfare or its mis- 
ery. (5) 

Hitherto we have considered tne history of a nation's nat- 
ural life as busied with its institutions and laws ; and as 
tracing their effects in their three great divisions of, 1st, 
politics, 2d, instruction in the widest sense, and, 3d, econ- 
omy. Yet life, whether individual or national, is subject to 
a variety of irregular influences, such as originate in no 



10 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

known law. Unless the national will, as at Sparta, attempt 
to absorb into itself the wills of individuals, so that they shall 
do nothing, suffer nothing, desire nothing, but according to 
the bidding of law, there must always exist along with the 
most vigorous positive institutions and laws, a great mass of 
independent individual action and feeling, which cannot be 
without its influence on the national virtue and happiness. 
To these spontaneous elements belong science, art, and lite- 
rature, which may indeed be encouraged by institutions and 
laws, or discouraged, but yet on the whole their origin and 
growth in any given country has been owing to individuals 
rather than to the nation, or more properly perhaps to causes 
external to both, to those causes which have given genius 
and taste to some races of mankind in remarkable measure, 
and have denied them to others ; causes which have first pre- 
pared the fuel ready for kindling, and then have sent the 
spark to light it up into a blaze. No man can say why the 
great discoveries of science were made only at the time and 
in the country when and where they were made actually : 
why the compass was withheld from the navigation of the 
Roman Empire, but was already in existence when it was 
needed to aid the genius of Columbus : why printing was in- 
vented in time to preserve that portion of Greek literature 
which still survived in the fifteenth century, but was not 
known early enough to prevent the irreparable mischiefs of 
the Latin storming of Constantinople in the thirteenth : (6) 
why the steam-engine, triumphing over time and space, was 
denied to the stirring spirit of the sixteenth century, and re- 
served to display its wonderful works only to the nineteenth 

Other influences may possibly be named which have their 
effect on the national character and happiness ; but I may 
be pardoned if in so vast a field something should be omitted 
unconsciously, and something necessarily passed over, not to 
encroach too largely on your time and patience. But enough 



INAUGURAL LECTURE 41 

Aas been said I think to show that histary contains no mean 
treasures: that as being the biography of a nation, it partakes 
of the richness and variety of those elements which make up 
a nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness in the final 
cause of all human thought and action, God's glory and man's 
perfection, that is the measure of the greatness of history. 
Whatever there is of variety and intense interest in human 
nature, in its elevation, whether proud as by nature or sanc- 
tified as by God's grace ; in its suffering, whether bles&ea or 
unblessed, a martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange reverses, 
in its varied adventures, in its yet more varied powers, its 
courage and its patience, its genius and its wisdom, its justice 
and its love, that also is the measure of the interest and va- 
riety of history. The treasures indeed are ample, but we 
may more reasonably fear whether we may have strength 
and skill to win them. 

I have thus far spoken of history in the abstract ; at least 
of history so far as it relates to civilized nations, with no re- 
ference to any one time or country more than to another. 
But, as I said before, I must not forget that my particular 
business is not history generally, but modern history ; and 
without going farther into details than is suitable to the present 
occasion, it may yet be proper, as we have considered what 
history in general has to offer, so now to see also whether 
there is any peculiar attraction in modern history: and 
whether ancient and modern history in the popular sense of 
the words differ only in this, that the one relates to events 
which took place before a certain period, and the other to 
events which have happened since that period ; or whether 
there is a real distinction between them, grounded upon an 
essential difference in their nature. If they differ only chro- 
nologically, it is manifest that the line which separates them 
is purely arbitrary : and we might equally well fix the limit 
of ancient history at the fall of the Babylonian monarchyt 



42 INAUGUHAL LECTURE. 

and embrace the whole fortunes of Greece and Rome within 
what we choose to call modern ; or, on the other hand, we 
might carry on ancient history to the close of the fifteenth 
century, and place the beginning of modern history at that 
memorable period which witnessed the expulsion of the 
Moors from Spain, the discovery of America, and, only a few 
years later, the Reformation. 

It seems, however, that there is a real difference between 
ancient and modern history, which justifies the limit usually 
assigned to them ; the fall, namely, of the western empire ; 
that is to say, the fall of the western empire separates the 
subsequent period from that which preceded it by a broader 
line, so far as we are concerned, than can be found at any 
other point either earlier or later. For the state of things 
now in existence, dates its origin from the fall of the western 
empire ; so far we can trace up the fortunes of nations which 
are still flourishing ; history so far is the biography of the 
living ; beyond, it is but the biography of the dead. In our 
own island we see this most clearly : our history clearly begins 
with the coming over of the Saxons ; the Britons and Romans 
had lived in our country, but they are not our fathers ; we are 
connected with them as men indeed, but nationally speaking, 
the history of Caesar's invasion has no more to do with us, 
than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited 
our forests. We, this great English nation, whose race and 
language are now overrunning the earth from one end of it 
to the other — we were born when the white horse of the 
Saxons had established his dominion from the Tweed to tne 
Tamar. (7) So far we can trace our blood, our language, 
the name and actual divisions of our country, the beginnings 
of some of our institutions. So far our national identity ex- 
tends, so far history is modern, for it treats of a life which 
was then, and is not yet extinguished. 

And if we cross the channel, what is the case with our 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 43 

great neighbour nation of France ? Roman Gaul had existed 
since the Christian sera ; the origin of Keltic Gaul is older 
than history : (8) but France and Frenchmen came into 
being when the Franks established themselves west of the 
Rhine. Not that before that period the fathers of the ma- 
jority of the actual French people were living on the Elbe or 
the Saal ; for the Franks were numerically few, and through- 
out the south of France the population is predominantly, and 
much more than predominantly, of Gallo-Roman origin. 
But Clovis and his Germans struck root so deeply, and their 
institutions wrought such changes, that the identity of France 
cannot be carried back beyond their invasion : the older 
elements no doubt have helped greatly to characterize the 
existing nation ; but they cannot be said by themselves to be 
that nation. 

The essential character then of modern history appears to 
be this j that it treats of national life still in existence : it 
commences with that period when all the great elements of 
the existing state of things had met together ; so that subse- 
quent changes, great as they have been, have only combined 
or disposed these same elements differently ; they have added 
to them no new one. By the great elements of nationality, I 
mean race, language, institutions, and religion ; and it will 
be seen that throughout Europe all these four may be traced 
up, if not actually in every case to the fall of the western 
empire, yet to the dark period which followed that fall, while 
in no case are all the four to be found united before it; 
Otherwise, if we allow the two first of these elements, without 
the third and fourth, to constitute national identity, especially 
when combined with sameness of place, we must then suy 
that the northern countries of Europe have no ancient his- 
tory, inasmuch as they have been inhabited from the earliest 
times by the same race speaking what is radically the same 
language. But it is better not to admit national identity, till 



14 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

the two elements of institutions and religion, or at any rate 
one of them, be added to those of blood and language. At 
all events it cannot be doubted, that as soon as the four are 
united, the national personality becomes complete. 

It cannot be doubted then that modern history so defined is 
especially interesting to us, inasmuch as it treats only of 
national existence not yet extinct: it contains, so to speak, the 
first acts of a great drama now actually in the process of 
being represented, and of which the catastrophe is still future. 
But besides this personal interest, is there nothing in modern 
history of more essential difference from ancient — of dif- 
erence such as would remain, even if we could conceive our- 
selves living in some third period of history, when existing 
nations had passed away like those which we now call ancient, 
and when our modern history would have become what the 
history of Greece and Rome is to us ? 

Such a difference does characterize what we now call 
modern history, and must continue to characterize it forever. 
Modern history exhibits a fuller development of the human 
race, a richer combination of its most remarkable elements. 
We ourselves are one of the most striking examples of this. 
We derive scarcely one drop of our blood from Roman fathers; 
we are in our race strangers to Greece, and strangers to 
Israel. But morf'.lly how much do we derive from all three : 
in this respect their life is in a manner continued in ours; 
their influences, to say the least, have not perished. 

Here then we have, if I may so speak, the ancient world 
still existing, but with a new element added, the element of 
our English race. And that this element is an important 
one, cannot be doubted for an instant. Our English race is 
the German race ; for though our Norman fathers had learned 
to speak a stranger's language, yet in blood, as we knov/, 
they were the Saxons' brethren : both alike belong to the 
Teutonic or German stock, (d') Now the imDortance of this 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 45 

Mtock is plain frorA this, that its intermixture with the Keltic 
and Roman races at the fall of the western empire has 
changed the whole face of Europe. It is doubly remarkable, 
because the other elements of modern history are derived from 
the ancient world. If we consider the Roman empire in the 
Iburth century of the Christian sera, we shall find in it Chris* 
lianity, we shall find in it all the intellectual treasures of 
Greece, all the social and political wisdom of Rome. (10) 
What was not there, was simply the German race, and the 
peculiar qualities which characterize it. This one addition 
was of such power, that it changed the character of the 
whole mass : the peculiar stamp of the middls ages is un- 
doubtedly German ; the change manifested in the last three 
centuries has been owing to the revival of the older elements 
with greater power, so that the German element has been 
less manifestly predominant. But that element still pre- 
serves its force, and is felt for good or for e\il in almost 
every country of the civilized world. (11) 

We will pause for a moment to observe over how large 
a portion of the earth this influence is now extended. It af- 
fects more or less the whole west of Europe, from the head 
of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of 
Sicily, from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides and 
to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a inrge 
portion of this space is not predominantly German ; but even 
in France, and Italy, and Spain, the influence of the Franks, 
Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards, while it 
has colored even the language, has in blood and institutions 
left its mark legibly and indelibly. Germany, the Low 
Countries, Switzerland for the most part, Denmark, Norv/ay, 
and Sweden, and our own islands, are all in language, in 
blood, and in institutions, German most decidedly. But all 
South America is peopled with Spaniards and Portuguese, all 
North America and all Australia with Englishmen. I sa"V 



46 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

nothing of the prospects and influence of tRe German race hi 
Africa and in India : it is enough to say that half of Europe, 
and all America and Australia, are German more or less 
completely, in race, in language, or in institutions, or in all. 

Modern history then differs from ancient history in this, 
that while it preserves the elements of ancient history unde- 
stroyed, it has added others to them ; and these, as we have 
seen, elements of no common power. (12) But the German 
race is not the only one which has been thus added ; the 
Sclavonic race is another new element, which has overrun 
the east of Europe, as the German has overrun the west. 
And when we consider that the Sclavonic race wields the 
mighty empire of Russia, we may believe that its future in- 
fluence on the condition of Europe and of the world may be 
far greater than that which it exercises now. 

This leads us to a view of modern history, which cannot 
indeed be confidently relied on, but which still impresses the 
mind with an imagination, if not with a conviction, of its 
reality. I mean, that modern history appears to be not only 
a step in advance of ancient history, but the last step ; it ap- 
pears to bear marks of the fulness of time, as if there would 
be no future history beyond it. For the last eighteen hun- 
dred years, Greece has fed the human intellect ; Rome, 
taught by Greece and improving upon her teacher, has been 
the source of law and government and social civilization ; 
and what neither Greece nor Rome could furnish, the per- 
fection of moral and spiritual truth, has been given by Chris- 
tianity. The changes which have been wrought have arisen 
out of the reception of these elements by new races ; races 
endowed with such force of character that what was old in 
itself, when exhibited in them, seemed to become something 
new. But races so gifted are and have been from the begin- 
ning of the world few in number : the mass of mankind have 
no such power; they either receive the impression of foreign 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 47 

elements so completely that their own individual character is 
absorbed, and they take their whole being from without ; or 
being incapable of taking in higher elements, they dwindle 
away when brought into the presence of a more powerful life, 
and become at last extinct altogether. Now looking anxiously 
round the world for any new races which may receive the 
seed (so to speak) of our present history into a kindly yet a 
vigorous soil, and may reproduce it, the same and yet new, 
for a future period, we know not where such* are to be found. 
Some appear exhausted, others incapable, and yet the sur- 
face of the whole globe is known to us. The Roman colonies 
along the banks of the Rhine and Danube looked out on the 
country beyond those rivers as we look up at the *stars, and 
actually see with our eyes a world of which we know nothing. 
The Romans knew that there was a vast portion of the earth 
which they did not know ; how vast it might be was a part 
of its mysteries. But to us all is explored : imagination can 
hope for no new Atlantic island to realize the vision of Plato's 
Critias : no new continent peopled by youthful races, the 
destined restorers of our worn-out generations. Everywhere 
the search has been made, and the report has been received ; 
we have the full amount of earth's resources before us, and 
they seem inadequate to 'supply life for a third period of hu- 
man history. 

I am well aware that to state this as a matter of positive 
belief would be the extreme of presumption ; there may be 
nations reserved hereafter for great purposes of God's provi- 
dence, whose fitness for their appointed work will not betray 
itself till the work and the time for doing it be come. There 
was a period perhaps when the ancestors of the Athenians 
were to be no otherwise distinguished from their barbarian 

* What may De done hereafter by the Sclavonic nations, is not prejudged 
by this statement ; because the Sclavonic nations are elements of our actual 
history, although their powers may be as yot only partially develoi)ed. 



48 INAUGURAL LECTURE 

neighbours than by some finer taste in the decorations of their 
arms, and something of a loftier spirit in the songs which told 
of the exploits of their warriors ; and when Aristotle heard 
that Rome had been taken by the Gauls, he knew not that 
its total destruction would have been a greater loss to man- 
kind than the recent overthrow of Veii. But without any 
presumptuous confidence, if there be any signs, however un- 
certain, that we are living in the latest period of the world's 
history, that no other races remain behind to perform what 
we have neglected or to restore what we have ruined, then 
indeed the interest of modern history does become intense, 
and the importance of not wasting the time still left to us 
may wellbe called incalculable. When an army's last re- 
serve has been brought into action, every single soldier knows 
that he must do his duty to the utmost ; that if he cannot win 
the battle now, he must lose it. So if our existing nations 
are the last reserve of the world, its fate may be said to be 
in their hands — God's work on earth will be left undone if 
they do not do it. 

But our future course must be hesitating or mistaken, if 
tve do not know what course has brought us to the point 
where we are at present. Otherwise, the simple fact tha+ 
after so many years of trial the world has made no greater 
progress than it has, must impress our minds injuriously ; 
either making us despair of doing what our fathers have not 
done, or if we do not despair, then it may make us unreason- 
ably presumptuous, as if we could do more than had been 
done by other generations, because we were ^iser than they 
or better. But history forbids despair without authorizing 
vanity : it explains why more has not been done by our fore- 
fathers : it shows the difficulties which beset them, rendering 
success impossible ; while it records the greatness of their 
efforts, which we cannot hope to surpass. But without sur- ' 
passing, perhaps without equalling their efforts, we may 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 49 

learn by their experience to avoid their difficulties : Napoleon 
crossed the Alps with scarcely the loss of a man, while Han- 
nibal left behind him nearly half his army ; yet Napoleon 
was not a greater man than Hannibal, nor was his enter- 
prise conducted with greater ability. (13) Two things we 
ought to learn from history ; one, that we are not in our- 
selves superior to our fathers; another, that we are shame- 
fully and monstrously inferior to them, if we do not advance 
beyond them. 

And now if the view here taken of the greatness, first of 
all history, and then especially of modern history, be correct, 
it will at once show in what way the professorship which I 
have the honor to hold, may be made productive of some 
benefit to the University. It is certainly no affected humility, 
but the very simple truth, to acknowledge, that of many large 
and fruitful districts in the vast territory of modern history I 
possess only the most superficial knowledge, of some I am all 
but totally ignorant. I could but ill pretend to guide others 
where I should be at a loss myself: and though many might 
possess a knowledge far surpassing mine, yet the mere ordi- 
nary length of human life renders it impossible for any one 
to have that profound acquaintance with every part of modern 
history in detail, which might enable him to impart a full 
understanding of it to others. But yet it may be possible, 
and this indeed is my hope, to encourage others to study it, 
to point out how much is to be done, and to suggest some 
rules for doing it. And if, in addition to this, I could myself 
exemplify these rules in working at some one particular por- 
tion of history, I should have accomplished all that I can 
venture to anticipate. Meanwhile we have in this place an 
immense help towards the study of modern history, in our 
familiar acquaintance with the history of the ancient world, 
or at any rate with the works of its greatest historians, The 
importance of this preparation is continually brought to my 



50 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

mind by observing the bad effects of the want of it in those 
who have not enjoyed our advantages : on the other hand, 
here, as in other matters, advantages neglected are but our 
shame, and if we here are ignorant of modern history, we 
are I think especially inexcusable. 

I have detained you I fear too long, and yet have left much 
unsaid, and have compressed some part of what I have said 
into limits which I am afraid have scarcely allowed it to be 
stated intelligibly. This defect however it may be possible 
to remedy on future occasions, when much that has been 
now put summarily may be developed more fully.- For 
other defects not equally within my power to remedy, I have 
only in all sincerity to request your indulgence. Deeply as 
I value the privilege of addressing you as one of the profes- 
sors of this University — and there is no privilege which I 
more value, no public reward or honour which could be to me 
so welcome — I feel no less keenly the responsibility which it 
involves, and the impossibility of discharging its duties in 
any manner proportioned to its importance, or to my own 
Bonsc of what it requires. (14) 



NOTES 



TO 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 



Note 1. — Page 25. 

« « * u fpj^g works of great poets require to be approached at tlio 
outset with a full faith in their excellence : the reader must be con- 
vinced that if he does not fully admire them, it is his fault and not 
theirs. This is no more than a just tribute to their reputation ; in 
other words, it is the proper modesty of an individual thinking his 
own unpractised judgment more likely to be mistaken than the con- 
curring voice of the public. And it is the property of the greatest 
works of genius in other departments also, that a first view of them 
is generally disappointing ; and if a man were foolish enough to go 
away trusting more to his own hasty impressions than to the de- 
liberate judgment of the world, he would remain continually as 
blind and ignorant as he was at the beginning. The cartoons of 
Raphael, at Hampton Court Palace, the frescoes of the same great 
painter in the galleries of the Vatican at Rome, the famous statues 
of the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere, and the Church of St 
Peter at Rome, the most magnificent building perhaps in the world 
— all alike are generally found to disappoint a person on his first 
view of them. But let him be sure that they are excellent, and 
that he only wants the knowledge and the taste to appreciate them 
properly, and every succeeding sight of them will open his eyes 
more and more, till he learns to admire them, not indeed as much as 
they deserve, but so much as greatly to enrich and enlarge his own 
mind, by becoming acquainted with such perfect beauty. So it is 
with great poets : they must be read often and studied re\ erently, 
before an unpractised mind can gain any thing like an adequate 
notion of their excellence. Meanwhile, the process is in itself 



52 NOTES 

most useful : it is a good thing to doubt our i »vn wisdom, it is a 
good tiling to believe, it is a good thing to admire. By. continually 
looking upwards our minds will themselves grow upwards ; and as a 
man, by indulging in habits of scorn and contempt for others, is sure 
to descend to the level of what he despises, so the opposite habita 
of admiration and enthusiastic reverence for excellence impart to 
ourselves a portion of the qualities which we admire ; and here, as 
in every thing else, humility is the surest path to exaltation." 

Dr. Arnold's Preface to ^Poetry of Common Life.* 



Note 2.— Page 31. 

In one of his ' travelling journals,' Dr. Arnold writes : 
" This is the Canton Uri, one of the Wald Staaten or Forest 
Cantons, which were the original germ of the Swiss confederacy. 
But Uri, like Sparta, has to answer the question, what has mankind 
gained over and above the ever precious example of noble deeds, 
from Murgarten, Sempach, or Thermopylae. What the world has 
gained by Salamis and Plataea, and by Zama, is on the other hand 
no question, any more than it ought to be a question what the world 
has gained by the defeat of Philip's armada, or by Trafalgar and 
Waterloo. But if a nation only does great deeds that it may live, 
and does not show some worthy object for which it has lived — and 
Uri and Switzerland have shown but too little of any such — ^then 
our sympathy with the great deeds of their history can hardly go 
beyond the generation by which those deeds were performed ; and 
I cannot help thinking of the mercenary Swiss of Novara and Ma- 
rignano, and of the oppression exercised over the Italian bailiwicks 
and the Pays de Yaud, and all the tyrannical exclusiveness of these 
little barren oligarchies, as much as of the heroic deeds of the three 
men, Tell and his comrades, or of the self-devotion of my namesake 
of Winkelried, when at Sempach he received into his breast * a 
pheaf of Austrian spears.' " 

Life and Correspondence : Appendix C, No. ix 

He, too, of battle-martyrs chief ! 
Who, to recall his daunted peers» 
For victory shaped an open space. 



TO INAUGURAL LECIURE. 53 

By gathering with a wide embrace. 
Into his single breast a sheaf 
Of fatal Austrian spears."* 

Wordsworth's Poetical Works, vol. iv. p. 147. 

In his History of Rome, (ch. xxxvii.,) Dr. Arnold speaks of a 
state of society where patriotism becomes impossible — the inn^r 
Jfe being so exhausted as to inspire the citizens (of the Greek com- 
monwealth in their decline) with neither respect nor attachment. 

Note 3.— Page 35. 

" These 'high commissioners,' (under the Terentilianlawj 'De- 
cemviri legibus scribendis,' were like the Greek voixoOtTut, oi in the 
language of Thucydides, (viii. 67,) which exactly expresses the ob- 
ject of the law, Uku dvSpas iXiadai ^vyy^acpias avroKpccTopas—Kad' 8 Ti apiara 

i} ir6\is oh^aETai. We are SO accustomed to distinguish betw^een a 
constitution and a code of laws, that we have no one word which 
will express both, or convey a full idea of the wdde range of the 
commissioners' powers ; which embraced at once the vi'ork of the 
French constituent assembly, and that of Napoleon, when he drew 
up his code. But this comprehensiveness belonged to the character 
of the ancient lawgivers ; a far higher term than legislators, al- 
though etymologically the same ; they provided for the whole life 
of their citizens in all its relations, social, civil, political, moral, and 

religious." 

Arnold's History of Rome, vol. i. 228, note. 

* * * " The Greeks had, as we have, their aypaipos v6nog, or un- 
written law of reason and conscience : but they had no other written 
law, v6nos yeypaiinivos, than the civil law of each particular state ; 
and by this law not only their civil but their moral and religious 
duties also were in ordinary cases regular ed. It was the sole au- 
thority by which the several virtues could be enforced on the mass 
of mankind ; and to weaken this sanction in public opinion, by re- 
presenting the law as a thing mutable and subject to the popular 
judgment, instead of being its guide and standard, was to leave men 

* " Arnold Winkelried, at the battle of S em pa ch, broke an Austrian phalanx in this 
manner. The event is one of the most famous in the annals of Swiss heroism ; and 
pictures and prints of it are frequent throughout the country." 



54 NOTES 

with no other law than their own reaso:i and consciencie ; a state 
for which even Christians are not yet sufficiently advanced, with all 
the lights and helps that their reason and conscience ought to have 
derived from the truths and motives of the gospel. In short, tho 
vd/iog ytypannivos with the Greeks corresponded at once to the law of 
the land, and to the revealed law of God in Christian countries ; 
and if both these laws amongst us had only the same authority of 
human institution and custom ; if the one could not be altered with- 
out lessening our veneration for the other ; who would not say with 
Cleon, that it was far better to endure bad political institutions than 
to destroy the only generally understood sanction of moral duty, and 
to leave the mass of mankind with no law but that of their own 
minds, or, as it would too often be, their own prejudices and pas- 
sions]" 

Arnold's Thucydides, vol. i. 388, note 

Note 4.— Page 38. \ 

* * * " I agree with Carlyle in thinking that they (the Liberal 
party) greatly over-estimate Bentham, and also that they overrate 
the political economists generally ; not that I doubt the ability of 
those writers, or the truth of their conclusions, as far as regards 
their own science ; but I think that the summum bonum of their 
science, and of human life, are not identical ; and, therefore, many 
questions in which free trade is involved, and the advantages of 
large capital, &c., although perfectly simple in an economical point 
of view, become, when considered politically, very complex ; and 
the economical good is very often, from a neglect of other points, 
made in practice a direct social evil." 

" Ldfe and Correspondence,^^ letter Jan. 23, 1840. Am. edit. p. 367. 

* * * " It is right — it is absolutely necessary,at this day — that all 
who value their country should raise a warning voice, whether in 
the legislature, or in the pulpit, or in schools, or in books, against the 
theory which would make this accumulation (' the augmentation of 
comforts and enjoyments, and all the other elements which make 
up an accumulation of national good out of the separate good of in- 
dividuals and of families') the end of society and the primary obli- 
gation of the citizen. Such a theory has now gnawed its way not 



TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 55 

only into all our political philosophy but into our public legislation 
and private practice, till it has degraded society from its highest 
fiinctions, has sensualized and animalized its character, has intro- 
duced a chaos of conflicting elements into our system of laws, has 
secretly dissolved the ties which bound us to each other as well as 
to our sovereign, and has extinguished the noblest instincts of pri- 
vate as of public life. It must be thus whenever expediency is 
made the rule of action, especially of political action." 

Sewell's " Christian Politics,''^ p. 160 

Note 5.— Page 39. 

* * * " There are few points of more importance in the history 
of a nation : the law of property, of real property especially, and a 
knowledge of all the circumstances of its tenure and divisions, 
would throw light upon more than the physical condition of a peo- 
ple ; it would furnish the key to some of the main principles preva- 
lent in their society. For instance, the feudal notion that property 
in land confers jurisdiction, and the derivation of property either 
from the owner's own sword, or from the gift of the stronger chief 
whose sword he had aided, not from the regular assignment of so- 
ciety, has most deeply affected the political and social state of the 
nations of modern Europe. At Rome, as elsewhere among the 
free commonwealths of the ancient world, property was derived 
from political rights rather than political rights from property ; and 
the division and assignation of lands to the individual members of the 
state by the deliberate act of the whole community, was familiarly 
recognised as the manner in which such property was most regu- 
larly acquired." 

History of Rome, chap. xiv. vol. 1. p. 266. 

* * * " As society advances in true civilization, its supremacy 
over all individual rights of property becomes more fully recognised : 
and it is understood that we are but stewards of our possessions 
with regard to the commonwealth of which we are members, as 
well as with respect to God." 

History of Rome, chap. xiv. vol. i. p. 264. 

* * " In order to point out the restrictions which exist, and which 
I contend are useless and prejudicial, I shall be obliged to refer 



56 NOTJTS 

Bhortly to the origin and history of the mortmain laws ', and 1 trust 
I shall be able to show from that reference, that restrictions which 
might be beneficial in the fifteenth, are altogether the reverse in the 
nineteenth century. In England, I maintain, restrictions in mort- 
main originated in the natural dread which the great feudal barons, 
and each successive king, as the great landowner in the kingdom, 
entertained of the growing power and wealth of the monastic body : 
they were imposed, not from any political-economic notion that it 
was unwise to tie up land in perpetuity, but because, as is invariably 
alleged in the preamble of those acts, such alienations to religious 
bodies deprived the lords of the advantages of tenure, and weakened 
the military defences of the country. Take the first and most im- 
portant of those acts, the 9th of Henry HI. ; it was confined in 
terms to the regular clergy, and merely restrained the tenants of 
other lords from transferring their tenure by a fictitious process to 
religious houses. And so far am I from saying that this law, or 
the laws passed in the reign of Edward I. and subsequent reigns, 
were uncalled for, that I look on it as a matter of deep regret that 
the monastic institutions in those ages were not still more stringently 
supervised and guarded against, so that their wholesale and fatal 
destruction at the Reformation might have been averted. But I 
contend that restrictions which were useful then, are useful no 
longer. What reasonable ground of fear is there now of a fictitious 
title being set up by religious houses to lands which donors wish to , 
grant to them ] What reason is there now to apprehend detriment 
to the lords or danger to the state, from tenants setting up crosses 
in their fields in order to avoid performing their proper military 
service 1 I think it so obvious, that no argument in favor of mort- 
main laws can be drawn from enactments passed previous to the 
Reformation, from a state of society ecclesiastically and politically 
so different from our own, that I shall not weary the House by any 
farther consideration of them." 

Lord John Manners' Speech on the Laws of Mortmain^ 

in the House of Commons, A.ug. 1, 1843. 

Note 6. — Page 40. 

* * * " Photius, who was patriarch of Constantinople in the lattei 
half of the ninth century, has left a sort of catalogue raisonne, of 



TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 57 

rather an abstract, of the various books which he was in the habit 

of reading'. In this work, which he called his library, there are 

preserved abridgments of many books which would otherwise have 

been altogether lost to us. * * * * So capricious is the chance 

which has preserved some portions of ancient history from oblivion. 

while it has utterly destroyed all record of others. But Photius's 

library, compiled in the ninth century, shows what treasures of 

Greek literature were then existing at Constantinople, which in the 

course of the six following centuries perished irrecoverably. In 

this respect the French and Venetian conquest in the <Jiirteenth 

century was far more destructive than the Turkish conquest in the 

fifteenth." 

History of Rome, eh. xxxv. vol. ii. p. 408, note. 

Note 7. — Page 42. 

* * * La colonic Saxonne " recevait des Bretons, ses h6tes, 
toutes les choses necessaires k la vie ; plusieurs fois elle combattit 
vaillamment et fidelement pour eux, et leva centre les Pictes et le&» 
Scots son etendard ou etait peint un cheval blanc, espece d'embleme 
conforme au nom de ses deux chefs," Henghist et Horsa.* 

Thierry, Hist, de la Conqmte de I'Angleterre, liv. ler, p. 44. 

Note 8. — Page 43. 

" We can trace with great distinctness the period at which the 
Kelts became familiarly known to the Greeks. Herodotus only 
knew of them from the Phoenician navigators : Thucydides does 
not name them at all : Xenophon only notices them as forming part 
of the auxiliary force sent by Dionysius to the aid of Lacedaemon. 
Isocrates makes no mention of them. But immediately afterwards 
their incursions into central and southern Italy, on the one hand, 
and into the countries between the Danube and Macedonia on the 
other, had made them objects of general interest and curiosity ; and 
Aristotle notices several points in their habits and character, in dif- 
ferent parts of his philosophical works." 

History of Rome, vol. i, p. 491, note. 

* ' L'orthographie saxonne est Henf^ist. Hengist signifie un 61alon, et tiTra-, al 
hros, un cheval.' 



58 NOTES 

'In the fourth century before the Christian era, " the Kelts oi 
Gauls broke through the thin screen which had hitherto concealed 
them from sight, and began for the first time to take their part in 
the great drama of the nations. For nearly two hundred years 
they continued to fill Europe and Asia with the terror of their 
name : but it was a passing tempest, and if useful at all, it was use- 
ful only to destroy. The Gauls could communicate no essential 
points of human character in which other races might be deficient ; 
they could neither improve the intellectual state of mankind, nor its 
social and political relations. When, therefore, they had done their 
appointed work of havoc, they were doomed to be themselves ex- 
tirpated, or to be lost amidst nations of greater creative and construc- 
tive power ; nor is there any race which has left fewer traces of 
itself in the character and institutions of modern civilization." 

History of Rome, vol. i. chap. xxii. p. 499 



Note 9. — Page 44. 

The Saxons, Danes, and Normans, by whom England was suc- 
cessively invaded, were " all originally of the same race, but so 
altered by their various fortunes, that the Danish invaders had no 
national sympathy with the Anglo-Saxons of Alfred and Ethelred ; 
and the Normans, having changed their language as well as their 
habits, were regarded both by Saxons and Danes as not only a dif- 
ferent nation, but actually a different race. The historians of Den- 
mark speak of the Norman conquerors of England as a people of 
Roman or Latin race, and deplore the conquest as a triumph of the 
Roman blood and language over the Teutonic." 

Arnold's Thucydides, vol. ii. p. 55, note 

Note 10. — Page 45. 

* * * (Rome) " Of earthly sights Tphov ahrb — ^Athens and Jerusalem 
are the other two — the three people of God's election, two for things 
temporal, and one for things eternal. Yet even in the things eter- 
nal they were allowed to minister. Greek cultivation and Roman 
polity prepared men for Christianity. * * " 

Life and Correspondence, Appendjjc C, No. ix. 6 



TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 59 



Note 11. — Page 45. 

• * * " The river itself (the Rhine) was the frontier of the (Roman) 
feflfipire — the limit as it were of two worlds, that of Roman laws and 
customs, and that of German. Far before us lay the land of our 
Saxon and Teutonic forefathers — the land uncorrupted by Roman 
or any other mixture ; the birth-place of the most moral races of 
men that the world has yet seen — of the soundest laws — the least 
violent passions, and the fairest domestic and civil virtues. I 
thought of that memorable* defeat of Varus and his three legions, 
which forever confined the Romans to the western side of the 
Rhine, and preserved the Teutonic nation — the regenerating ele 
ment in modern Europe — safe and free." 

Life and Correspondence, Appendix C, No. iii. 1. 

Note 12. — Page 46. 

In his edition of Thucydides, Dr. Arnold has taken another vie'v 
of the divisions of history, and lays great stress upon what he re- 
gards as " a more sensible, a more philosophical division of history 
than that, which is commonly adopted, of ancient and modern." 
" We shall see," he adds, " that there is in fact an ancient and a 
modern period in the history of every people ; the ancient differing, 
and the modern in many essential points agreeing, with that in 
which we now live. Thus, the largest portion of that history which 
we commonly call ancient is practically modern, as it describes 
society in a stage analogous to that in which it now is ; while, on 
the other hand, much of what is called modern history is practically 
ancient, as it relates to a state of things which has passed away. 
Thucydides and Xenophon, the orators of Athens, and the philoso- 
phers, speak a wisdom more applicable to us politically than the 
wisdom of even our own countrymen who lived in the middle ages ; 
and their position, both intellectual and political, more nearly re- 
sembled ovc: own." 

Essay on the Progress of Society, Appendix i. vol. i. of Thucydides. 

* " This, and the defeat of the Moors by Charles Martel, he used to rank as the twe 
aiost important battles in the world." 



60 NOTES 

The subject is also referred to in the preface to vol. iii. as fol- 
lows : " In conclusion, I must beg to repeat what I have said before, 
that the period to which the work of Thucydides refers belong? 
properly to modern and not to ancient history ; and it is this cir- 
cumstance, over and above the great ability of the historian himself 
which makes it so peculiarly deserving of our study. The state of 
Greece from Pericles to Alexander, fully described to us as it is in 
the works of the great contemporary historians, poets, orators, and 
philosophers, affords a political lesson perhaps more applicable to 
our own times, if taken all together, than ar y other portion of his- 
tory which can be named anterior to the e.ghteenth century. 
Where Thucydides, in his reflections on the bloody dissensions at 
Corcyra, notices the decay and extinction of the simplicity of old 
times, he marks the great transition from ancient history to modern, 
the transition from an age of feeling to one of reflection, from a 
period of ignorance and credulity to one of inquiry and scepticism. 
Now such a transition took place in part in the sixteenth century ; 
the period of the Reformation, when compared with the ages pre- 
ceding it, was undoubtedly one of inquiry and reflection. But still 
it was an age of strong feeling and of intense belief; the human 
mind cleared a space for itself vigorously within a certain circle ; 
but except in individual cases, and even those scarcely avowed, 
there were still acknowledged limits of authority, which inquiry 
had not yet ventured to question. The period of Roman civiliza- 
tion from the times of the Gracchi to those of the Antonines, was 
in this respect far more completely modern ; and accordingly this 
is one of the periods of history which we should do well to study 
most carefully. But unfortunately our information respecting it is 
much scantier than in the case of the corresponding portion of 
Greek history ; the writers, generally speaking, are greatly inferior ; 
and in freedom of inquiry no greater range was or could be taken 
than that which the mind of Greece had reached already. And in 
point of political experience, we are even at this hour scarcely on 
a level with the statesmen of the age of Alexander. Mere lapse 
of years confers here no increase of knowledge ; four thousand 
years have furnished the Asiatic with scarcely any thing that de- 
serves the name of political experience ; two thousand years since 
the fall of Carthage huve furnished the African with absolutely 



TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 61 

nothing. Even in Europe and in America, it would not be easy now 
to collect such a treasure of experience as the constitutions of a hun- 
dred and fifty-three commonwealths along the various coasts of the 
Mediterranean afforded to Aristotle. There he might study the in- 
stitutions of various races derived from various sources : every 
possible variety of external position, of national character, of posi- 
tive law ; agricultural states and conmiercial, military powers and 
maritime, wealthy countries and poor ones, monarchies, aristocracies, 
and democracies, with every imaginable form and combiration of 
each and all ; states overpeopled and underpeopled, old and new, in 
every circumstance of advance, maturity, and decline. So rich was 
the experience which Aristotle enjoyed, but which to us is ordy at- 
tainable mediately and imperfectly through his other writings ; 
his own record of all these commonwealths, as well as all other 
information concerning the greatest part of them, having unhappily 
perished. Nor was the moral experience of the age of Greek 
civilization less complete. By moral experience I mean an ac- 
quaintance with the whole compass of those questions which relate 
to the metaphysical analysis of man's nature and faculties, and to 
the practical object of his being. This was derived from the strong 
critical and inquiring spirit of the Greek sophists and philosophers, 
and from the unbounded freedom which they enjoyed. In mere 
metaphysical research the schoolmen were indefatigable and bold, 
but in moral questions there was an authority which restrained 
them: among Christians, the notions of duty and of virtue must be 
assumed as beyond dispute. But not the wildest extravagance of 
atheistic wickedness in modern times can go farther than the 
sophists of Greece went before them ; whatever audacity can dare 
and subtilty contrive to make the words ' good' and ' evil' change 
their meaning, has been already tried in the days of Plato, and by 
iiis eloquence, and wisdom, and faith unshaken, has been put to 
shame. Thus it is that, while the advance of civilization destroys 
much that is noble, and throws over the mass of human society an 
atmosphere somewhat dull and hard ; yet it is only by its peculiar 
trials, no less than by its positive advantages, that the utmost virtue 
of human nature can be matured; and those who vainly lament that 
progress cf earthly things which, whether good or evil, is certainly 
inevitable may be consoled by the thought that its sure tendency is 



62 NOTES 

to confirm and purify the virtue of the good : and that to us, holding 
in our hands, not the wisdom of Plato only, but also a treasure of 
wisdom and of comfort which to Plato was denied, the utmost 
activity of the human mind may be viewed without apprehension, 
in the confidence that we possess a charm to deprive it of its evil, 
and to make it minister for ourselves certainly, and through us, if 
we use it rightly, for the world in general, to the more perfect tri- 
umph of good. 

" I linger round a subject which nothing could tempt me to quit 
but the consciousness of treating it too unworthily. What is mis- 
called ancient history, the really modern history of the civilization 
of Greece and Rome, has for years interested me so deeply, that it 
Is painful to feel myself after all so unable to paint it fully. Of the 
manifold imperfections of this edition of Thucydides none can be 
more aware than I am ; but in the present state of knowledge these 
will be soon corrected and supplied by others ; and I will at least 
hope that these volumes may encourage a spirit of research into 
history, and may in some measure assist in directing it ; that they 
may contribute to the conviction that history is to be studied as a 
whole, and according to its philosophical divisions, not such as are 
merely geographical and chronological ; that the history of Greece 
and of Rome is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and forgotten 
institutions, but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much 
for the curiosity of the scholar, as for the instruction of the states- 
man and the citizen. 
" January, 1835 " 

Note 13.— Page 49. 

* * * " Hannibal was arrived in Italy, but with a force so weakened 
by its losses in men and horses, and by the exhausted state of the 
survivors, that he might seem to have accomplished his great march 
in vain. According to his own statement, which there is no reason 
to doubt, he brought out of the Alpine valleys no more than twelve 
thousand African and eight thousand Spanish infantry, with six 
thousand cavalry; so that his march from the Pyrenees to the 
plains of northern Italy must have cost him thirty-three thousand 
Dien ; an enormous loss, which proves how severely the army must 



TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. (VS 

have suffered from the privations of the march, and the severity 
of the Alpine climate ; for not half of these thirty-three thousand 
men can have fallen in battle." 

History of Ro7ne, chap, xliii. vol. iii. p, 9i 

* * " Such is the story of the earliest recorded passage of the 
Alps by civilized men, the earliest and the most memorable. Ac- 
customed as we are, since the completion of the great Alpine roads 
in the present century, to regard the crossing of the Alps as an 
easy summer excursion, we can even less than our fathers conceive 
the difficulties of Hannibal's march, and the enormous sacrifices by 
which it was accomplished. He himself declared that he had lost 
above thirty thousand men since he had crossed the Pyrenees, and 
that the remnant of his army, when he reached the plains of Italy, 
amounted to no more than twenty thousand foot and six thousand 
horsemen : nor does Polybius seem to suspect any exaggeration in 
the statement. Yet eleven years afterwards Hasdrubal crossed 
the Alps in his brother's track without sustaining any loss de- 
serving of notice, and ' a few accidents' are all that occurred in 
the most memorable passage of modern times, that of Napoleon 
over the great St. Bernard, (' On n'eutque peu d'accidens.' Napole- 
on's Memoirs, i. 261.) It is evident that Hannibal could have found 
nothing deserving the name of a road, no bridges over the rivers, 
torrents, and gorges, nothing but mere mountain paths, liable to be 
destroyed by the first avalanche or landslip, and which the barbarians 
neither could nor cared to repair, but on the destruction of which 
they looked out for another line, such as for their purposes of com- 
munication it was not difficult to find." 

History of Rome, vol. iii. p. 480, note. 

Note 14.— Page 50. 

In connection with tiiis lecture there should be read the account 
of Dr. Arnold's character as a student and writer of history, given 
in Mr. Stanley's excellent biography of him. Appendix No. 1 of 
this volume will be found to contain a selection from it. 

In Appendix No. 2, I have selected from his description of 
Eugby School' some of his opinions upon historical instruction. 



APPENDIX. 



I HAVE alluded in my Inaugural Lecture to authorities 
deserving of all respect which maintain the doctrine of 
Warburton, that " the object of political society is the pre- 
servation of body and goods.'** I alluded particularly to the 
Archbishop of Dublin, and to the author of a Review of 
Mr. Gladstone's book, " The State in its Relations with the 
Church," in the 139th number of the Edinburgh Review. 
It is due to such opponents not to pass by their arguments 
unnoticed ; it is due to them, and still more to myself, lest 1 
should be suspected of leaving them unanswered because I 
could not answer them. 

It appears to me that the Reviewer is led to maintain 
Warburton's doctrine, chiefly in consequence of certain 
practical difficulties which seem to result from the doctrine 
opposed to it. He does not wish to restrict the state from 
regarding religious and moral ends ; but fearing that its 
regard for them will lead to practical mischief, he will only 
allow it to consider them in the second place, so far, that is^ 
as they do not interfere with its primary object, the pro- 
tection of persons and property. The Warburtonian theory 
appears not to be the natural conclusion of inquiries into the 
object of governments, but an ingenious device to enable u? 
to escape from some difficulties which we know not how tc 
deal with. If the opposite theory can be freed from these 
difficulties, it may be believed that the Reviewer would 
gladly sacrifice the theory of Warburton. 



APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 65 

1 regard the theory of government, maintained in my 
Lecture, to be a theory which we can in practice only par- 
tially realize. This I quite allow, at least with regard either 
to the present, or to any future, which we can as yet ven- 
ture to anticipate. It is a theory which, nowhere perfectly 
realized, is realized imperfectly in very different degrees in 
different times and countries. It must not be forced upon a 
state of things not ripe for it, and therefore its most zealous 
advocates must often be content to tolerate violations of it 
more or less flagrant. All this is true ; but yet I believe it 
to be the true theory of government, and that by acknow- 
ledging it to be so, and keeping it therefore always in sight, 
we may be able at last to approach indefinitely near to it. 

The moral character of government seems to follow ne- 
cessarily from its sovereign power ; this is the simple ground 
of what I will venture to call the moral theory of its objects. 
For as in each individual man there is a higher object than 
the preservation of his body and goods, so if he be subjected 
in the last resort to a power incapable of appreciating this 
higher object, his social or political relations, instead of being 
the perfection of his being, must be its corruption; the voice 
of law can only agree accidentally with that of his con- 
science, and yet on this voice of law his life and death are 
to depend ; for its sovereignty over him must be, by the na- 
ture of the case, absolute. 

The Reviewer's distinction between primary and second- 
ary ends, and his estimate of physical ends as primary and 
moral as secondary, may apply perfectly well to any society, 
except that which is sovereign over all human life ; because 
so long as this sovereign society preserves the due order of 
objects, postponing the physical to the moral, other societies 
may safely in their subordinate sphere reverse it, the check 
upon them being always at hand ; the confession theoreti- 
cally, and the care practically, that the physical end shall 



66 APPENDIX TO 

take precedence of the moral only at certain times and in 
certain instances, but that the rule of life is the other way. 

And again, that singleness of object which the Re vie wet 
considers so great an excellence, " every contrivance of hu- 
man wisdom being likely to answer its end best when it is 
constructed with a single view to that end," belongs it is 
true to subordinate societies or contrivances, but ceases to 
exist as we ascend from the subordinate to the supreme. 
This is the exact difference between teaching and education ; 
a teacher, whether it be of Latin and Greek, or of French 
and German, or of geography and history, or of drawing, oi 
of gymnastics, has nothing to think of beyond his own imme- 
diate subject ; it is not his concern if his pupil's tastes and 
abilities are more adapted to other studies, if that particular 
knowledge which he is communicating is claiming a portion 
of time more than in accordance with its value. He has one 
single object, to teach his own science effectually. But he 
who educates must take a higher view, and pursue an end 
accordingly far more complicated. He must adjust the re- 
spective claims of bodily and mental exercise, of different 
kinds of intellectual labour ; — he must consider every part 
of his pupil's nature, physical, intellectual, and moral ; re ■ 
garding the cultivation of the last, however, as paramount to 
that of either of the others. (1) Now, according to the Re- 
viewer's theory, the state is like the subordinate teacher , 
according; to mine it is like the educator, and for this verv 
reason, because its part cannot be subordinate ; if you make 
the state no more than a particular teacher, we must look foi 
the educator elsewhere ; for the sovereign authority over us 
must be like the educator, it must regulate our particular 
lessons, and determine that we shall study most what is of 
most value. 

• But I believe that the moral theory of the objects of a 
state, expressed as I have here expressed it, would in itself 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 67 

never have been disputed. It is considered to be objection- 
able and leading to great practical mischief, when stated 
somewhat differently ; when it is said, that the great object 
of a state is to promote and propagate religious truth ; a 
statement which yet appears to be identical, or nearly so, 
witli the moral theory ; so that if it be false, the moral theory 
is thought to be overturned with it. But it has always ap- 
peared to me that here precisely we find the great confusions 
of the whole question ; and that the substitution of the term 
" religious truth" in the place of " man's highest perfection" 
has given birth to the great difficulties of the case. For by 
" religious truth" we immediately understand certain dog- 
matical propositions on matters more or less connected with 
religion ; these we connect with a certain creed and a cer- 
tain sect or church, and then the theory comes to be, that the 
great object of a state is to uphold some one particular 
church, conceived to be the true one, and to discountenance 
all who are not members of it ; a form in which I do not 
wonder that the moral theory should be regarded as most 
objectionable. 

All societies of men, whether we call them states or 
churches, should make their bond to consist in a common 
object and a common practice, rather than in a common be- 
lief; in other words, their end should be good rather than 
truth. We may consent to act together, but we cannot con- 
sent to believe together ; many motives may persuade us to 
the one ; we may like the object, or we may like our com- 
pany, or we may think it safest to join them, or most conve- 
nient, and any one of these motives is quite sufficient to induce 
a unity of action, action being a thing in our own power. 
But no motives can persuade us to believe together ; we may 
wish a statement to be true, we may admire those who be- 
lieve it, we may find it very inconvenient not to believe it ; 
all this helps us nothing ; unless our own mind is freely con- 



68 APPENDIX TO 



vincE-d that the statement or doctrine be true, we cannot by 
possibility believe it. That union in action will in the end 
lead very often to union of belief is most true ; but we cannot 
ensure its doing so; and the social bond cannot directly re- 
quire for its perfectness more than union of action. It cannot 
properly require more than it is in the power of <nen to give ; 
and men can submit their actions to a common law at their 
own choice, but their internal convictions they cannot. 

Such a union of action appears historically to have been 
the original bond of the Christian church. Whoever was 
willing to receive Christ as his master, to join His people, 
and to walk according to their rules, he was admitted to the 
Christian society. We know that in the earliest church 
there existed the strangest varieties of belief, some Christians 
not even believing that there would be a resurrection of the 
dead. Of course it was not intended that such varieties 
should be perpetual ; a closer union of belief was gradually 
effected : but the point to observe, is that the union of belief 
grew out of the union of action : it was the result of belong- 
ing to the society rather than a previous condition required 
for belonging to it. And it is true farther, that all union of 
action implies in one sense a union of belief; that is, they 
who agree to do a certain thing must believe that in some 
way or other, either as a positive good or as the lesser evil, it 
is desirable for them to do it. But belief in the desirableness 
of an act differs greatly from belief in the truth of a propo- 
sition ; even fear may give unity of action, and such unity 
of belief as is implied by it : a soldier is threatened with 
death if he does not fight, and so believing that to fight is 
now desirable for him, as a less evil than certain death, he 
stands his ground and fights accordingly. But fear, though 
it may make us wish with all our hearts that we could be- 
lieve the truth of a proposition, yet cannot enable or compel 
us to believe it. 



I 



INAUGURAL LECTURE 69 

Now the state aiming at the highest perfection of its mem- 
bers, can require them to conform their conduct to a certain 
law ; and it may exclude from its benefits those who dispute 
this law's authority. Nor does it in the least matter whether 
the law so enforced be of the state's own invention, or be 
borrowed from some other nation, as many countries have 
adopted the Roman law ; or be received not from any human 
author at all, but from God. A state may as justly declare 
the New Testament to be its law, as it may choose the insti- 
tutes and code of Justinian. In this manner the law of 
Christ's church may be made its law ; and all the institutions 
which this law enjoins, whether in ritual or discipline, may 
be adopted as national institutions just as legitimately as any 
institutions of mere human origin. 

The question then which is sometimes asked so indig- 
nantly, — Is the government to impose its religion upon the 
people ? may be answered by asking again, — Is the govern, 
ment to impose its own laws upon the people ? We speak 
of the government as distinct from the people, without there- 
by implying that it is in opposition to the people. In a cor- 
rupt state the government and people are wholly at variance ; 
in a perfect state they would be wholly one ; in ordinary 
states they are one more or less imperfectly. We need not 
be afraid to say, that in a perfect state the law of the gov- 
ernment would be the law of the people, the law of their 
choice, the expression of their mind. In less perfect states 
the law of the government is more or less the law of the 
people, suiting them in the main if not entirely. If it be 
wholly or in great part unwelcome to them, something in 
that state is greatly wrong ; and although I believe that 
there are cases where a dictatorship is a good, and where 
good laws may rightfully be imposed on a barbarian and un- 
willing people ; yet, as the rule, there can be no doubt that 
such a state of things is tyranny. When I speak theiefore 



70 APPENDIX TO 

of the government, I am speaking of it as expressing the 
mind and will of the nation ; and though a government may 
not impose its own law, whether human or divine, upon an 
adverse people ; yet a nation, acting through its government, 
may certainly choose for itself such a law as it deems most 
for its good. 

And therefore when it has been said that " these islands 
do not belong to the king and parliament in the same man- 
ner as the house or land of any individual belongs to the 
owner," and that therefore a government may not settle the 
religious law of a country as the master of a family may 
settle the religious practices of his household ; this is true 
only if we consider the king and parliament as not speaking 
the voice of the nation, but their own opposed to that of the 
nation. For the -^ight of a nation over its own territory 
must be at least as absolute as that of any individual over 
his own house and land ; and it surely is not an absurdity to 
suppose that the voice of government can ever be the voice 
of the nation : although they unhappily too often differ, yet 
surely they may conceivably, and very often do in practice, 
completely agree. 

The only question then is, how far the nation or society 
may impose its law upon a number of dissentient individuals ; 
what we have to do with, are the rights of the body in rela- 
tion to those of the several members ; a grave question cer- 
tainly — I know of none more difficult ; but which exists in 
all its force, even if we abandon the moral theory of the 
state altogether. For if we acknowledge the idea of a church, 
ihe difficulty meets us no less ; the names of state and church 
naake no difference in the matter ; we have still a body im- 
posing its laws upon individuals ; if the state may not inter- 
fere vt'ith an individual's religion, how can the church do it ? 
for the difficulty is that the individual cannot and must not be 
»vholly merged in the society ; he cannot yield all his con- 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 71 

victions of truth and right to the convictions of other men ; 
he may sometimes be called upon to dissent from, and to dis. 
obey, chief priests and doctors, bishops and presbyters, no 
less than the secular authorities, as they are called, of em- 
perors and kings, proconsuls and parliaments. Long before 
Constantino interfered with his imperial power in the con- 
cerns of the church, the question existed : conscience might 
be lorded over, tastes and feelings rudely shocked, belief 
Claimed for that which to the mind of the individual appeared 
certain error ; the majority might tyrannize over the mi- 
nority ; the society might interfere with the most sacred 
rights of the individual. 

Nor is it the state alone which, by imposing articles of 
faith, is guilty of tempting men to hypocrisy ; a charge which 
has been very strongly urged against the system of making 
full citizenship depend on the profession of Christianity : nor 
is it the state alone which does more than merely instruct 
and persuade, and which employs "secular coercion" in the 
cause of the Gospel ; all which things have been said to be 
*' at variance with the true spirit of the Gospel," and to 
" imply a sinful distrust, want of faith in Christ's wisdom, and 
goodness, and power." The church has required obedience 
and punished disobedience ; I will not appeal to St. Paul's 
expression of " delivering a man to Satan for the destruction 
of the flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of the 
Lord," because what is there meant is uncertain, and the 
power claimed may be extraordinary ; but I maintain that 
the sentence of excommunication, which has been held al- 
ways to belong to the church, is to all intents and purposes a 
secular coercion ; it goes much beyond instruction and per- 
suasion, it is a punishment as completely as ever was the 
ancient driixia, or deprivation of political rights : (2) it inflicts 
and is meant to inflict great inconvenience and great suflering, 
acting most ceenly upon the noblest minds, but yet touching 



72 APPENDIX TO 

the meanest as effectually, to say the least, as the ancient 
civil penalty of banishment. 

Now accidentally excommunication may be a small pen- 
alty, but in its own nature it is most grievous. It cuts a 
man off from the kindness and society of his nearest and 
dearest friends ; it divides him from those with whom alone 
he can in the nature of things feel strong sympathy ; for 
where can a Christian find such but among Christ's people, 
and from these excommunication cuts him off. And con- 
ceive the case of a country, geographically remote from other 
countries, and inhabited only by Christians ; what resource 
would, under such circumstances, be left to an excommuni- 
cated person ? and would not the temptation be extreme to 
him to profess his belief in whatever the church taught, to 
yield obedience to whatever it required, in order to be saved 
from a life of loneliness and of infamy ? Yet the power of 
excommunicating for heretical opinions is one which the 
church is supp*osed to hold lawfully, while the power of dis- 
franchising for such opinions is called persecution, and a 
making Christ's kingdom a kingdom of the world. 

It is of some consequence to disentangle this confusion, be- 
cause what I have called the moral theory of a state, is really 
open to no objections but such as apply with equal force to 
the theory of a church, and especially to the theory of a 
national, and still more of a universal church. Wherever 
there is centralization, there is danger of the parts of the 
body being too much crippled in their individual action ; and 
yet centralization is essential to their healthy activity no less 
than to the perfection of the body. But if men run away 
with the mistaken notion that liberty of conscience is threat- 
ened only by a state religion, and not at all by a church re- 
ligion, the danger is that they will abandon religion alto- 
gether to what they call the church, that is, to the power of 
a society far worse governed than most states, and likely to 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 73 

lay far heavier burdens on individual conscience, because 
the spirit dominant in it is narrower and more intolerant. 

No doubt all societies, whether they are called states oi 
churches, are bound to avoid tempting the consciences of in. 
dividuals by overstraining the terms of citizenship or commu- 
nion. And it is desirable, as I said before, to require, a pro- 
fession of obedience rather than of belief, because obedience 
can and will often be readily rendered where belief would 
be withheld. But as states require declarations of allegiance 
to the sovereign, so they may require declarations of sub- 
mission to the authority of a particular law. If a man 
believes himself bound to refuse obedience to the law of 
Christianity, or will not pledge himself to regard it as para- 
mount in authority to any human legislation, he cannot prop- 
erly be a member of a society which conceives itself bound 
to regulate all its proceedings by this law, and cannot allow 
any of its provisions to be regarded as revocable or alterable. 
But no human power can presume to inquire into the degree 
of a man's positive belief: the heretic was not properly he 
who did not believe what the church taught, but he who wil- 
fully withdrew himself from its society, refusing to conform 
to its system, and setting up another system of his own. 

1 know that it will be objected to this, that it is no other 
than the system of the old philosophers, who upheld pagan- 
ism as expedient, while they laughed at it in their hearts as 
false. But he who makes such an objection must surely forget 
the essential difference between paganism and Christianity. 
Paganism, in the days of the philosophers, scarcely pretended 
to rest on a foundation of historical truth ; no thinking man 
believed in it, except as allegorically true. But Christianity 
commends itself to the minds of a vast majority of thinking 
men, as being true in fact no less than in doctrine ; they be- 
lieve in it as literally true no less than spiritually, ^^hen I 
speak then of a state requiring obedience to the Christiap 

1 



74 APPENDIX TO 

law, it means that the state, being the perfect church, should 
do the church's work ; that is, that it should provide for the 
Christian education of the young, and the Christian instnuN 
tion of the old ; that it should, by public worship and by a 
Christian discipline, endeavour, as much as may be, to realize 
Christianity to all its people. Under such a system, the 
teachers would speak because they believed, for Christian 
teachers as a general rule do so, and their hearers would, in 
like manner, learn to believe also. Farther, the evidence of 
the Christian religion, in itself so unanswerable, Mrould Li 
confirmed by the manifest witness of the Christian church, 
when possessing a real living constitution, and purified by an 
efficient discipline ; so that the temptations to unbelief would 
be continually lessened, and unbelief, in all human proba- 
bility, would become continually of more rare occurrence. 
And possibly the time might come when a rejection of Chris- 
tianity would be so clearly a moral offence, that profane 
writings would be as great a shock to all men's notions of 
right and wrong as obscene writings are now, and the one 
might be punished with no greater injury to liberty of con- 
science than the other. 

.But this general hearty belief in Christianity is to be re- 
garded by the Christian society, whether it be called church 
or state, not as its starting point, but as its highest perfection. 
To begin with a strict creed and no efficient Christian insti- 
tutions, is the sure way to hypocrisy and unbelief; to begin 
with the most general confession of faith, imposed, that is, as 
a test of membership, but with vigorous Christian institutions, 
is the way most likely to lead, not only to a real and genoTal 
belief, but also to a lively perception of the highest points of 
Christian faith. In other words, intellectual objections to 
Christianity should be tolerated, where they are combined 
with moral obedience ; tolerated, because in this way they 
lire most surely removed ; whereas a corrupt or disorganized 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 75 

church with a minute creed, encourages intellectual objec- 
tions ; and if it proceeds to put them down by force, it does 
often violate the right of conscience, punishing an unbelief 
which its own evil has provoked, and, so far as human judg- 
ment can see, has in a great measure justified. 

I have endeavored to show that the favorite objections 
against the state's concerning itself with religion, apply no 
less to the theory of a church, the difficulty being to prevent 
the society from controlling the individual mind too com- 
pletely, and from encouraging unbelief and hypocrisy by re- 
quiring prematurely a declaration of belief from its members, 
rather than a promise of obedience. It is hardly necessary 
to observe, that the moral theory of a state is not open to the 
objection commonly brought against our actual constitution, 
namely, that parliament is not a fit body to legislate on mat- 
ters of religion ; for the council of a really Christian state 
would consist of Christians at once good and sensible, quite 
as much as the council of a really Christian church ; and if 
we take a nominally Christian state, or a nominally Christian 
church, their councils will be equally unfit to legislate ; to 
say nothing of the obvious answer, that the details of all 
great legislative measures, whether ecclesiastical, or legal, or 
military, may be safely left to professional knowledge and 
experience, so long as there remains a higher power, not pro- 
fessional, to give to them the sanction of law. 

Finally, the moral theory of a state, which I believe to be 
the foundation of political truth, agrees and matches, so to 
speak, with the only true theory of a church. If the state 
under any form, and in its highest state of perfection, can 
only primarily take cognizance of physical ends ; then its 
rulers can certainly never be the rulers of the church, and 
the church must be governed by rulers of its own. Now the 
notion of a priesthood, or of a divinely appointed succession 
of church governors, does not indeed necessarily follow from 



,7C APPENDIX TO 

this ; but at any rate it agrees marvellously with it ; while, 
on the other hand, if there be in the church no priesthood, and 
no divinely ordered succession of governors, then it is ready 
to become identified with the Christian state, and to adopt it3 
forms of government ; and if the Christian state be a contra- 
diction in terms, because the state must always prefer physi- 
cal objects to moral, then the church has no resource but to 
imitate its forms as well as it *can, although in a subordinate 
society they must lose their own proper efficacy. 

Now believing with the Archbishop of Dublin, that there 
is in the Christian church neither priesthood nor divine suc- 
cession of governors, and believing with Mr. Gladstone that 
the state's highest objects are moral and not physical, I can- 
not but wonder that these two truths are in each of their sys- 
tems divorced from their proper mates. The church freed 
from the notions of priesthood and apostolical succession, is 
divested of all unchristian and tyrannical power ; but craves 
by reason of its subordinate condition the power of sovereign 
government, that power which the forms of a free state can 
alone supply healthfully. And the state having sovereign 
power, and also, as Mr. Gladstone allows, having a moral 
end paramount to all others, is at once fit to do the work of 
the church perfectly, so soon as it becomes Christian j nor 
can it abandon its responsibility, and surrender its conscience 
up into the hands of a priesthood, who have no knowledge 
superior to its own, and who cannot exercise its sovereignty. 
The Christian king, or council, or assembly, excludes the 
interference of the priesthood ; the church without a priest- 
hood, craves its Christian assembly, or council, or king. 

Believing that the church has no divinely appointed suc- 
cession of governors or form of government, and that its 
actual governments, considering it as distinct from the state, 
have been greatly inferior to the governments of well-ordered 
kingdoms and commonwealths ; believing that the end and 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 77 

object of a Christian kingdom or commonwealth is precisely 
the same with that of a Christian church, and that the sepa- 
ration of the two has led to the grievous corruption of both, 
making the state worldly and profane, and the church formal, 
superstitious, and idolatrous ; believing farther, that the state 
cannot be perfect till it possess the wisdom of the church, nor 
the church be perfect till it possess the power of the state ; that 
the one has as it were the soul, and the other the jTganized 
body, each of which requires to be united with the other ; I 
would unite one half of the Archbishop of Dublin's theory 
with one half of Mr. Gladstone's ; agreeing cordially with 
Mr. Gladstone in the moral theory of the state, and agreeing 
as cordially with the archbishop in what I will venture to 
call the Christian theory of the church, and deducing from 
the two the conclusion that the perfect state and the perfect 
church are identical. 

In what has been said above, I have rather attempted to 
answer objections and to remove misconceptions with regard 
to the moral theory of a state, than to offer any positive proof 
of that theory. It seems to me to be one of those truths 
which in itself command general assent, and that the opposi- 
tion to it is mostly an after-thought, originating solely in a 
sense of the difficulties which it is supposed practically to in- 
volve. And therefore to remove those difficulties, leaves the 
theory with its own internal persuasiveness unimpaired, and 
likely as such to be generally received. Something, how- 
ever, in support of the theory itself has been offered in the 
Inaugural Lecture ; and it may farther be proper to notice 
here a little more in detail two elaborate attacks upon 't, 
which have been made in the Archbishop of Dublin's "Ad- 
ditional remarks on the Jews' Relief Bill," published in the 
volume entitled, " Charges and other Tracts," printed in 1836 : 
and in his work on the " Kingdom of Christ," printed in 1841. 

In these works it is asserted and implied continually, thai 



76 APPENDIX TO 

religion is not within the province of the civil magistrate • 
and that secular or legal coercion may not be employed iii 
the cause of the Gospel. Now the first of these statements 
is surely not a thing to be taken for granted ; and whether it 
be right or wrong, it is certain that such a doctrine is con- 
demned by the almost unanimous consent of all writers on 
government, whether heathen or Christian, down to the 
eighteenth century ; and in later times, to name no others, 
by Burke* and Coleridge. Grotius, no mean authority surely 
on points of law and government, has an express work, " De 
imperio summarum Potestatum circa sacra;" in which he 
uses nearly the same argument that I have adopted in my 
Inaugural Lecture : namely, that the sovereigflty of the state 
makes it necessarily embrace all points of human life and 
conduct. And he says, " Si quis dixerit actiones esse diver- 
sas, alias puta judiciales, alias militares, alias ecclesiasticas, 
ac proinde hujus diversitatis respectu posse ipsum summum 
imperium in plures dividi, sequitur ex ejus sententia, ut 
eodem tempore idem homo ab hoc ire jussus ad forum, ab 
illo ad castra, ab illo rursus in templum, his omnibus parere 
teneatur, quod est impossibile." Grotius, Opera Theol. torn, 
iv. (iii.) p. 204, ed. Londin. 1679. Nay, it is allowed by 
those who object to the moral theory of a state, that Christian 
legislators did well Li forcibly suppressing gladiatorial shows 
and impure rites, " as being immoral and pernicious ac- 

* " An alliance between church and state in a Christian conimonwealth, is, 
in my opinion, an idle and a fanciful speculation. An alliance is between two 
things that are in their nature distinct and independent, such as between two 
Bovereign states. But in a Christian commonwealth, the church and the statf) 
are one and the same thing, being different integral parts of the same vv hole 
* * * * Religion is so far, in my opinion, from being out of the province or duty of 
a Christian magistrate, that it is, and it ought to be, not only his care, but the 
principal thing in his care ; because it is one of the great bonds of hvmmn soci- 
ety, and its object the supreme good, the ultimate end and object of man him- 
self." Speech on the Unitarian Petition, 1792. Burke's Works, vol. x. p. 43 
od. 1818. 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 79 

ilons ;" but if the legislator has any thing to do with morality, 
the whole question is conceded ; for morality is surely not 
another name for expediency, or what is advantageous for 
body and goods ; yet if it be not, and a legislator may pro- 
hibit any practice because it is wicked, then he regards 
moral ends, and his care is directed towards man's highest 
happiness, and to the putting down his greatest misery, moral 
evil. Nor in fact does it appear how, on other than purely 
moral considerations, a state is justified in making certain 
abominations penal ; such acts involving in them no violence 
or fraud upon persons or property, which, according to War- 
burton, are the only objects of a state's care. 

The words *' secular" and "temporal" appear to me to be 
used by the adversaries of the moral theory of a state with 
some confusion. (3) Every thing done on earth is secular 
and temporal ; and in this sense no society, whether it be 
called church or state, can have for its direct objects any other 
than such as are secular and temporal. The object of the 
church is not to raise men to heaven, but to make them fit for 
heaven ; but this is a work done in time and in the world, 
and completed there ; nor does it differ from what it would be 
if there were no future life at all ; our duties to God and man 
would be just the same whether we were to exist for seventy 
years or for forever, although our hope and encouragement 
would be infinitely dijEferent. The words " temporal" and 
*' secular" have therefore no place in this question, unless we 
believe that the God of this world is really and truly not the God 
of the next; and that "temporal" things therefore are subject 
to a different government from things eternal. And so with 
the term " secular coercion :" it is manifest that no coercion 
can be applied to any man in this life without affecting his 
present well-being or enjoyment : excommunication is a 
*' secular coercion" as much as imprisonment ; it inflicts a 
present harm, it makes a man's life less happy than it would 



80 APPENI>,.X TO 

be otherwise. It is, in fact, one of the severest of earthly 
punishments ; for it is very well to talk of it as the natural 
act of a society against those who will not comply with its 
rules, and that it involves no inj^^ry, because a man has only 
to leave a society if he does not like it. But that society 
may be one to which i! is the pride and pleasure of his life 
to belong; and if the majority form rules which he finds very 
irksome, and then expel him for not complying with them, 
he sustains, I will not say an injury, but a hurt and loss; 
ne is put out of a society which he earnestly wished to belong 
to, and which comprehends, it may be, every respectable 
person in his neighbourhood. He has a strong temptation to 
comply even against his conscience, rather than incur such 
a penalty ; and when the society is the church of God, to live 
out of which would be to many minds intolerable, is it true 
that exclusion from that society is no temporal punishment 
or coercion ? 

But the argument against which I am contending relies 
mainly on our Lord's declaration to Pilate that " His king- 
dom was not of this world ;" from which it is concluded 
that Christians can never be justified in making the profes- 
sion of obedience to Christ a condition of citizenship, for that 
is to make Christ's kingdom a kingdom of the world. I have 
been in the habit of understanding our Lord to mean that 
His spiritual dominion did not of itself confer any earthly 
authority ; that, therefore. His servants did not fight for him 
against the Roman soldiers, as the servants of an earthly 
king would be bound to defend their master against the ser- 
vants of a foreign power. And so neither does the spiritual 
superiority of Christians either exempt them from obedience 
to the law of ordinary government, or authorize them to im- 
pose their own law on other men by virtue of that superior- 
ity. In other words, their religion gives them no political 
rights whatever which they would not have had without it. 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. OJ 

But this meaning is not considered sufficient. Our Lord 
meant to disclaim political power for His people, not only in 
their actual circumstances, but in all other conceivable cir- 
cumstances : not only as claimed by virtue of their religious 
superiority, but as claimed according to the simplest and 
most acknowledged principles of political right. If in days 
to come, emperor, senate, and people, shall have become 
Christians by the mere force of the truth and holiness of 
Christianity, yet they must not think that they may exercise 
their executive and legislative powers to the hurt of any law 
or institution now existing in the Roman heathen world. 
Never may they dare to interfere with the Roman's peculiar 
pride, the absolute dominion of the father over his sons ; nor 
with the state of slavery ; nor with the solemn gladiatorial 
sacrifice, so grateful to the shades of the departed ; nor with 
those festive rites of Flora, in which the people expressed their 
homage to the vivifying and prolific powers of nature. To stop 
one of these will be to make Christ's kingdom a kingdom of 
the world, which Christ has forbidden. True it is that to us 
thes'e institutions appear immoral or unjust, because Chris- 
tianity has taught us so to regard them ; but to a Roman they 
were privileges, or powers, or pleasures, which he could ill 
bear to abandon. And ntost strange is the statement that 
" every tribe having been accustomed to establish, wherever 
they were able, a monopoly of political rights for themselves, 
keeping all other inhabitants of the same territory in a state 
of tributary subjection, this was probably the very thing ap- 
prehended by those who persecuted the early Christians as 
disaffected persons." In the first place, '•' the notion of one 
tribe establishing a monopoly of political rights," belonged 
to a state of things which had long since perished, and was 
the last thing which any man would apprehend in the Roman 
world in the days of Tiberius, when all distinctions of condi- 
tion between the various races subject to the empire had 



82 APPENDIX TO 

either been done away long since by Alexander's conquests, 
or were daily being destroyed by the gift of the Roman fran- 
chise more and more widely. What the Romans dreaded 
was simply a revolt of Judaea ; they heard that there was a 
king of the Jews, and they naturally thought that he would 
attempt to recover the ancient kingdom of his nation ; and to 
this it was a clear and satisfactory answer, that the kingdom 
spoken of was not an earthly kingdom, that no one claimed 
as David's heir to expel Csesar as a foreign usurper. That 
the heathen Romans persecuted the Christians from a fear 
of' losing their civil rights should Christians become the pre- 
dominant party in the empire, is not only a statement with- 
out evidence, but acrainst it. We know from the Christian 
apologists what were the grounds of the persecution ; we 
know it farther from the well-known letters of Pliny and 
Trajan. The Christians were punished for their resolute 
non-conformity to the laws and customs of Rome, and as 
men who, by their principles and lives, seemed to condemn 
the common principles and practice of mankind. They were 
punished not as men who might change the laws of Rome 
hereafter, but as men who disobeyed them now. 

I am content with that interpretation of our Lord's words 
which I believe has been generally given to them ; that He 
did not mean to call Himself king of the Jews in the common 
sense of the term, so as to imply any opposition to the gov- 
ernment of the Romans. And as a general deduction from 
His words, I accept a very important truth which fanaticism 
has often neglected — that moral and spiritual superiority does 
not interfere with the ordinary lav/s, of political right ; that 
the children of God are not by virtue of that relation to 
claim any dominion upon earth. Being perfectly convinced 
that our Lord has not forbidden His people to establish His 
kingdom., when they can do so without the breach of any 
rule of common justice, I should hail as the perfect consum- 



INAUGURAL LECTURE. 83 

mation of earthly things, the fulfilment of the word, that the 
kingdoms of the world should become the kingdoms of God 
and of Christ. And that kingdoms of the world not only 
may, but are bound to provide for the highest welfare of 
their people according to their knowledge, is a truth in which 
philosophers and statesmen, all theory and all practice, have 
agreed with wonderful unanimity down to the time of the 
eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century, however, 
and since, the old truth has not wanted illustrious advocates. 
I have already named Burke and Coleridge in our own 
country, nor am I aware that the opposite notion has ever 
received any countenance from any one of the great men of 
Germany. Up to this moment the weight of authority is be- 
yond all comparison against it ; and it is for its advocates to 
establish it, if they can, by some clear proofs. At present 
there is no valid objection raised against the moral theory of 
a state's objects; difficulties only are suggested as to points 
of practical detail, some of them arising from the mixture of 
extraneous and indefensible doctrines with the simple theory 
itself, and others applicable indeed to that theory, but no less 
applicable to any theory which can be given of a Christian 
church, and to be avoided only by a system of complete in. 
dividual independence, in matters relating to morals and iQ 
religion. (4) 



NOTES 



TO 



APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 



Note 1. — Page 66. 

* * " A mere apprenticeship is not good education. 

" Whatever system of tuition is solely adapted to enable the 
pupil to play a certain part in the world's drama, whether for his 
own earthly advantage, or for that of any other man, or community 
of men, is a mere apprenticeship. It matters not whether the part 
be high or low, the hero or the fool. 

" A good education, on the other hand, looks primarily to the 
right formation of the Man in man, and its final cause is the well' 
being of the pupil, as he is a moral, responsible, and immortal 
being. 

" But, because to every man there is appointed a certain ministry 
and service, a path prescribed of duty, a work to perform, and 9 
race to run, an office in the economy of Providence, a good educa- 
tion always provides a good apprenticeship ; for usefulness is a 
necessary property of goodness. 

" The moral culture of man and so much of intellectual culture 
as is conducive thereto, is essential to education. Whatever of in- 
tellectual culture is beyond this, should be regarded as pertaining 
to apprenticeship, and should be apportioned to the demands of the 
vocation for which that apprenticeship is designed to qualify. 

" A man whose education is without apprenticeship, will be use- 
less ; a man whose education is all apprenticeship, will be bad, and 
therefore pernicious, and the more pernicious in proportion as his 
function is high, noble, or inliuential." 

Hartley Coleridge's ' Lives of Distinguished Northerns,^ 

n ."iSQ, note. 



NOTES TO APPENDIX, ETC. 85 

Note 2. — Page 71. 

" Arifila was either total or partial. A man was totally de- 
nrived of his rights, both for himself and for his descendants, wher 
he was convicted of murder, theft, false witness, partiality as ar- 
biter, violence offered to a magistrate, and so forth. This highest 
degree of aniiia excluded the person affected by it from the forum, 
and from all public assemblies ; from the public sacrifices, and from 
the law courts ; or rendered him liable to immediate imprisonment, 
if he was found in any of these places. It was either temporary 
or perpetual ; and either accompanied or not with confiscation of 
property. Partial dnixta only involved the forfeiture of some lew 
rights, as for instance, the right of pleading in court. Public debt- 
ors were suspended from their civic functions till they discharged 
their debt to the state. People who had once become altogether 
arifioi were very seldom restored to their lost privileges. The 
converse term to dniiia was hirniia.'''' 

* Diet, of Greek and Roman Antiquities.'' 

Edited by Dr. W. Smith. London, 1842. 

Note 3.~Page 79. 

In the contemplation of carrying on his history of Rome, to what 
he regarded as " its natural termination at the revival of the West- 
ern empire, in the year 800 of the Christian sera, by the coronation 
of Charlemagne at Rome," Dr. Arnold writes — " We shall then 
have passed through the chaos which followed the destruction of 
the old Western empire, and shall have seen its several elements- 
combined with others w^hich in that great convulsion had beep 
mixed with them, organized again into their new form. That new 
form exhibited a marked and recognised division between the so- 
called secular and spiritual powers, and thereby has maintained in 
Christian Europe the unhappy distinction which necessarily pre- 
vailed in the heathen empire between the church and the state ; a 
distinction now so deeply seated in our laws, our language, and our 
very notions, that nothing less than a miraculous interposition of 
God's providence seems capable, within any definite time, of eradi- 
cating it." 

Hint, of Rome, vol. I., Preface, viii 



86 NOTES 



Note 4. — Page 83. 

* * " Law is more or less the expression of man's reason, as 
opposed to his interest and his passion. I do not say that it has 
ever been the expression of pure reason ; it has not been so, for 
man's best reason is net pure. Nor has it been often free from the 
influence of interest, nor always from that of passion : there have 
been unjust laws in abundance ; cruel and vindictive laws have not 
been wanting. Law, in short, like every thing human, has been 
greatly corrupted, but still it has never lost its character of good 
altogether : there never, I suppose, has been an age or country in 
which the laws, however bad, were not better than no law at all ; 
they have ever preserved something of their essential excellence — 
that they acknowledged the authority of right, and not of might. 
Again, law has, and must have, along with this inherent respect 
for right and justice, an immense power ; it is that which, in the 
last resort, controls human life. It is, on the one hand, the source 
of the highest honours and advantages which men can bestow on 
men ; it awards, on the other hand, the extremity of outward evil 
■ — poverty, dishonour, and death. Here, then, we have a mighty 
power, necessary by the very condition of our nature ; clearly good 
in its tendency, however corrupted, and therefore assuredly coming 
from God, and swaying the whole frame of human society with su- 
preme dominion. Such is law in itself; such is a kingdom of this 
world. Now, then, conceive this law ... to become instinct and 
inspired, as it were, by the spirit of Christ's gospel ; and it retains 
all its sovereign power, all its necessity, all its original and inhe- 
rent virtue ; it does but lose its corruptions ; it is not only the pure 
expression of human reason, cleansed from interest and passion, 
but the expression of a purer reason than man's. Law in a Chris- 
tian country, so far as that country is really Christian, has, indeed, 
to use the magnificent language of Hooker, her seat in the bosom 
, of God ; and her voice, inasmuch as it breathes the spirit of divine 
truth, is indeed the harmony of the world." 

Arnold's Sermons^ vol. iv. , p. 444. 

The following passage in Dr. Arnold's preface to the third vol- 



TO APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 81 

ame of his Thucydides, has a bearing- on the opinions in the Ap- 
pendix to the Inaugural Lecture : 

" There is another point not peculiarly connected with Thucy- 
dides, except so far as he may be considered as the representative 
of all Grecian history, which appears to me deserving of notice ; 
that state of imperfect citizenship so common in Greece under the 
various names of fiiroiKoi^ treploiKoi^ avvoiKoi^ etc. This is a matter of 
importance, as bearing upon some of the great and eternal princi- 
ples of political science, and thus applying more or ]ess to the 
history of every age and nation. 

" It seems to be assumed in modern times that the being born of 
free parents within the territory of any particular state, and the 
paying towards the support of its government, conveys a natural 
claim to the rights of citizenship. In the ancient world, on the 
contrary, citizenship, unless specially conferred as a favour by 
some definite law or charter, was derivable only from race. The 
descendants of a foreigner remained foreigners to the end of time ; 
the circumstance of their being born and bred in the country was 
held to make no change in their condition ; community of place 
could no more convert aliens into citizens than it could change do- 
mestic animals into men. Nor did the paying of taxes confer 
citizenship ; taxation was the price paid by a stranger for the lib- 
erty of residing in a country not his own, and for the protection 
afforded by its laws to his person and property ; but it was thought 
to have no necessary connection with the franchise of a citizen, far 
less with the right of legislating for the commonwealth. 

" Citizenship was derived from race ) but distinctions of race were 
not of that odious and fantastic character which they have borne in 
modern times : they implied real differences often of the most im- 
portant kind, religious and moral. Particular races worshipped 
particular gods, and in a particular manner. But different gods 
had different attributes, and the moral image thus presented to the 
continual contemplation and veneration of the people could not but 
produce some effect on the national character. According to the 
attributes of the god was the nature of the hymns in which he waa 
celebrated : even the music varied ; and this alone, to a people of 
such lively sensibilities as the Greeks, was held to be a powerful 
moral engine ; whilst the accompanying ceremonies of the worship 



88 NOTES 

enforced with still greater effect the impression produced by the 
hymns and music. Again, particular races had particular cus- 
toms which affected the relations of domestic life and of public. 
Amongst some polygamy was allowed, amongst others forbidden ; 
some held infanticide to be an atrocious crime, others in certain 
cases ordained it by law. Practices and professions regarded as 
infamous by some, were freely tolerated or honoured amongst oth- 
ers ; the laws of property and of inheritance were completely va- 
rious. It is not then to be wondered at that Thucydides, when 
speaking of a city founded jointly by lonians and Dorians, should 
have thought it right to add ' that the prevailing institutions of the 
place were the Ionian ;' for according as they were derived from 
one or the other of the two races, the whole character of the peo- 
ple would be different. And therefore the mixture of persons of 
different race in the same commonwealth, unless one race had a 
complete ascendency, tended to confuse all the relations of life, 
and all men's notions of right and wrong ; or by compelling men to 
tolerate, in so near a relation as that of fellow-citizens, differences 
upon the main point of human life, led to a general carelessness 
and scepticism, and encouraged the notion that right and wrong 
have no real existence, but are the mere creatures of human 
opinion. 

" But the' interests of ambition and avarice are ever impatient of 
moral barriers. When a conquering prince or people had formed a 
vast dominion out of a number of different nations, the several cus- 
toms and religions of each were either to be extirpated or melted 
into one mass, in which each learned to tolerate those of its neigh- 
bours and to despise its own. And the same blending of races, 
and consequent confusion and degeneracy of manners, was favoured 
by commercial policy ; which, regarding men solely in the relation 
of buyers and sellers, considered other points as comparatively un- 
important, and in order to win customers would readily sacrifice oi 
endanger the purity of moral and religious institutions. So that in 
the ancient world, civilization, which grew chiefly out of conquest 
or commerce, went almost hand in hand with demoralization. 

" Now to those who think that political society was ordained for 
higher purposes than those of mere police or of traffic, t.'^^e princi- 
ple of the ancient commonwealths in making agreement in religion 



TO APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 89 

md morals the test of citizenship, cannot but appear wise and good, 
And yet the mixture of races is essential to the improvement of 
mankind, and an exclusive attachment to national customs is in- 
compatible with true liberality. How then was the problem to be 
solved ] how could civilization be attained without moral degene- 
racy 1 how could a narrow-minded bigotry be escaped without fall- 
ing into the worse evil of Epicurean indifference 1 Christianity 
has answered these questions most satisfactorily, by making reli- 
gious and moral agreement independent of race or national cus- 
toms ; by furnishing us with a sure criterion to distinguish between 
what is essential and eternal, and what is indifferent, and temporal 
or local : allowing, nay, commanding us to be with regard to every 
thing of this latter kind in the highest degree tolerant, liberal, and 
comprehensive ; while it gives to the former that only sanction to 
which implicit reverence may safely and usefully be paid, not the 
fond sanction of custom, or national prejudice, or human authority 
of any kind whatever, but the sanction of the truth of God. 

" That bond and test of citizenship then, which the ancient legis- 
lators were compelled to seek in sameness of race, because thus 
only could they avoid the worst of evils, a confusion and conse- 
quent indifference in men's notions of right and wrong, is now fur- 
nished to us in the profession of Christianity. He who is a Chris- 
tian, let his race be what it will, let his national customs be ever so 
different from ours, is fitted to become our fellow-citizen ; for his 
being a Christian implies that he retains such of his national cus- 
toms only as are morally indifferent ; and for all such we ought to 
feel the most perfect toleration. He who is not a Christian, though 
his family may have lived for generations on the same soil with us, 
though they may have bought and sold with us, though they may 
have been protected by our laws, and paid* taxes in return for that 

* " It is considered in our days that those who are possessed of property in a coun- 
try ought to be citizens in it : the ancient maxim was, that those who were citizens 
ought to be possessed of property. The difference involved in these two different 
views is most remarkable." 

In one of his letters also, Dr. Arnold remarks, " The correlative to taxation, in my 
opinion, is not citizenship but protection. ... To confound the right of taxing oneself 
with the right of general legislation, is one of the Jacobinical confusions of later days, 
arising from those low Warburtonian notions of the ends of political society." 

Arnold's mind was so deeply imbued with Greek philosophy — especially that of hit 



90 NOIES TO APPENDIX, ETC. 

Drotection, is yet essentially not a citizen but a sojourner ; and to 
admit such a person to the rights of citizenship tends in principle 
to the confusion of right and wrong, and lowers the objects of po- 
litical society to such as are merely physical and external." 

The reader, who ^^sires to investigate the subject discussed in 
the Appendix to the Inaugural Lecture, may consult, besides the 
authorities referred to there, the following works : Coleridge's 
' Constitution of Church and State according to the Idea of Hac.h^ 
Maurice's ' Kingdom of Christ^ and Derwent Coleridge's ' Scriptu- 
ral Character of the English Church.'^ 

chief favourjJ;e Aristotle, his feeling for whom was ever finding utterance in terms of 
even affectionate and familiar endearment, that to understand him rightly, it is neces- 
sary to bear in mind how much higher and more comprehensive a meaning there was 
in the Greek 'TzdXiTiKr]^ than in our English term 'politics.' It has been well re- 
marked by the writer of the article ' Civitas^ in the 'Diet, of Greek and Roman An- 
tiquities,' that, " If we would picture to ourselves the true notion which the Greeks 
embodied in the word rrdXtf, we must lay aside all modern ideas respecting the nature 
and object of a state. With us practically, if not in theory, the essential object of a 
state hardly embraces more than the protection of life and property. The Greeks, on 
the other hand, had the most vivid conception of the state as a whole, every part of 
which was to co-operate to some great end, to which all other duties were considered 
as subordinate." 



LECTURE 



It will not, I trust, be deemed impertinent or affected, it* 
^,', the very outset of these Lectures I venture again to 
request the indulgence of my hearers for the many deficien- 
cies which will undoubtedly be found in them. I could not 
enter on the duties of my office with tolerable cheerfulness, 
if I might not confess how imperfectly I can hope to fulfil 
them. And this is the more necessary, because I hope that 
our standard of excellence in history will be continually 
rising ; we shall be convinced, I trust, more and more, of 
the vast amount of knowledge which the historical student 
should aim at, and of the rare union of high qualifications 
required in a perfect historian. Now just in proportion to 
your sense of this, must be unavoidably your sense of the 
defects of these Lectures ; because I must often dwell on the 
value of a knowledge which I do not possess ; and must thus 
lay open my own ignorance by the very course which I be- 
lieve to be most beneficial to my hearers. 

I would gladly consent, however, even to call your atten- 
tion to my want of knowledge, because it is, I think, of such 
great importance to all of us to have a lively consciousness 
of the exact limits of our knowledge and our ignorance. A 
keen sense of either implies, indeed, an equally keen sense 
of the other. A bad geographer looks upon the map of a 
known and of an unknown country with pretty nearly the 
same eyes. The random line which expresses the form of a 
coast not yet explored ; the streams suddenly stopping in 



92 LECTURE I. 

their course, or as suddenly beginniDg to be delineated, be- 
cause their outlet or their sources are unknown; these convey 
to the eye of an untaught person no sense of deficiency, 
because the most complete survey of the most thoroughly 
explored country gives him no sense of full information. 
But he who knows how to value a good map, is painfully 
aware of the defects of a bad one ; and he who feels these 
defects, would also value the opposite excellencies. And 
thus in all things, as our knowledge and ignorance are cu- 
riously intermixed with one another, so it is most important 
to keep the limits of each distinctly traced, that we may be 
able confidently to make use of the one, while we endeavour 
to remove or lessen the other. 

One other remark of a difierent nature I would wish to 
make also, before I enter upon my lectures. Considering 
that the great questions on which men most widely differ from 
each other, belong almost all to modern history, it seems 
scarcely possible to avoid expressing opinions which some of 
my hearers will think erroneous. Even if not expressed 
they would probably be indicated, and I do not know how 
this is to be avoided. Yet I shall be greatly disappointed if 
at the close of these lectures, our feeling of agreement with 
one another is not much stronger than our feeling of differ- 
ence. You will not judge me so hardly as to suppose that f 
am expressing a hope of proselytizing any one : my mean- 
ing is very different. But I suppose that all calm inquiry 
conducted amongst those who have their main principles of 
judgment in common, leads, if not to an approximation of 
views, yet at least to an increase of sympathy. And the 
truths of historical science, which I certainly believe to be 
very real and very important, are not exactly the same thing 
with the opinions of any actual party. 

I will now detain you no longer with any prefatory obser- 
vations, but will proceed directly to our subject. 1 will sup- 



LECTURE I. 93 

pose then, if you please, the case of a member of this 
university who has just taken his degree, and finding liimself 
at leisure to enter now more fully into other than classical or 
mathematical studies, proposes to apply himself to modern 
history. We will suppose, moreover, that his actual know- 
ledge of the subject goes no farther than what he has collect- 
ed from any of the common popular compendiums. And 
now our question is, in what manner he should be recom- 
mended to proceed. 

We must allow that the case is one of considerable per- 
plexity. Hitherto in ancient profane history, his attention 
has been confined almost exclusively to two countries : and 
to a few great writers whose superior claims to attention are 
indisputable. Nay, if he goes farther, and endeavours to 
illustrate the regular historians from the other and miscella- 
neous literature of the period, yet his work in most cases is 
to be accomplished without any impossible exertion ; for 
many periods indeed of ancient history, and these not the 
least interesting, all our existing materials are so scanty that 
it takes but little time to acquaint ourselves with them all, 
and their information is not of a bulk to oppress any but the 
very feeblest memory. 

How overwhelming is the contrast when the student turns 
to modern history ! Instead of two countries claiming his 
attention, he finds several systems of countries, if I may so 
speak, any one of which offers a wide field of inquiry. First 
of all, there is the history of Europe ; then quite distinct from 
this there is oriental history ; and thirdly, there is the history 
of European colonies. But when we turn from the subjects 
of inquiry to the sources of information, the difference is 
greater still. Consider the long rows of folio volumes which 
present themselves to our notice in the Bodleian, or in our 
college libraries ; and think how many of these relate to 
modern history. There is the Benedictine collection of the 



94 LECTURE I. 

early French historians, and Muratori's great collection of 
the Italian historians of the middle ages : and these, vast as 
they are, relate only to two countries, and to particular 
periods. What shall we say of the great collections of works 
directly subsidiary to nistory, such as Rymer's Fcedera, and 
the various collections of treaties ; of bodies of laws, the 
statutes at large for example for England only: of guch 
works as the publications of the Record Commission, or as 
the Journals of the Houses of Parliament. Turning then to 
lighter works, which contain some of the most precious mate- 
rials for history, we find the countless volumes of the French 
memoirs, magazines, newspapers, (it is enough to remind 
you of the set of the JMoniteurs in the Bodleian;) correspond, 
ence of eminent men printed or in MS., (the library at Besan9on 
contains sixty volumes of the Letters of Granvella, Charles 
the Fifth's great minister,) and lastly, the swarm of miscella^ 
neous pamphlets, which in these later days as we know are 
in numbers numberless, but which in the seventeenth and 
even in the sixteenth centuries were more numerous than we 
sometimes are aware of. There is a collection of these in 
Corpus library for example, of which I retain a very grateful 
recollection for many hours of amusement which they used 
to afford me. I might go on and extend my catalogue till it 
far exceeded the length of the Homeric catalogue of the ships : 
but I have mentioned quite enough for my purpose. We 
may well conceive that amid this boundless wilderness of 
historical materials, the student may be oppressed with a 
sense of the hopelessness of all his efforts ; which way shall 
he choose among so many ? what progress can he hope to 
iiake in a space so boundless ? 

It is quite manifest that a choice must be made immedi- 
ately. The English student, unless determined by particular 
circumstances, will have no difficulty in seeing that European 
history should be preferred to oriental or to colonial ; and again, 



LECTURE I. 95 

• 

ill European history itself, that that of our own country, or of 
France, or of Germany, or of Italy, has a peculiar claim on 
his notice. Next, when he has fixed upon the country, he 
has to determine the period which he will study, whether hp 
will apply himself to any one of the three last centuries, or 
to the middle ages; and if to these last, whether to their 
<3arlier period or to. their close. And here again, particular 
circumstances or the taste of the student will of course in- 
fluence his decision. It matters very little, I think, on which 
his choice may happen to fall. 

We will suppose then the choice to be made of some one 
period, it should not be a very long one, whether bounded by 
merely arbitrary limits, as any one })articular century, or by 
such as constitute a natural beginning and end, as for ex- 
ample the period in German history between the Reformation 
and the peace of Westphalia. If the period fixed on be very 
short, it may be made to include the history of two or three 
countries ; but it would be best perhaps to select for our 
principal subject one country only. And now with our work 
limited sufficiently both as to time and as to space, it will 
assume a more compassable shape : and we shall be inclined 
to set about it vigorously. 

In the first place then we should take, I think, some one 
history as nearly contemporary as may be, and written, to 
speak generally, by a native historian. For instance, sup- 
pose that our subject be France in the middle of the fifteenth 
century, we should begin by reading the memoirs of Philip 
de Comines. The reason of this rule is evident ; that it is 
important to look at an age or country in its own point of 
view ; which of course is best to be obtained from a native 
and contemporary writer. Such a history is in fact a double 
lesson : it gives us the actions and the mind of the actors at the 
same time, telling us not only what was done, but with what 
motives and in what spirit it was done. Again, the language 



96 LECTURE I. 

of a native contemporary historian is the language of those 
of whom he is writing ; in reading him we are in some sort 
hearing them, and an impression of the style and peculiarities 
of any man's language is an important help towards realizing 
our notion of him altogether. I know not whether others 
have been struck with this equally ; but for myself I have 
seemed to gain a far more lively impression of what James 
the First was, ever since I read those humorous scenes in the 
Fortunes of Nigel which remind one so forcibly that he spoke 
a broad Scotch dialect. (1) 

If the period which we have chosen be one marked by im- 
portant foreign wars, it will be desirable also to read another 
contemporary history, written by a native of the other belli- 
gerent power. The same war is regarded so differently by 
the two parties engaged in it, that it is of importance to see it 
in more than one point of view, not merely for the correction 
of military details, but to make our general impressions and 
our sympathies with either side more impartial. • And in 
contemporary histories of wars we have the passions and pre- 
judices of both parties generally expressed with all their 
freshness, even in cases where both nations, when passion has 
gone to sleep, agree in passing the same judgment. Joan of 
Arc is now a heroine to Englishmen no less than to French- 
men : but in the fifteenth century she was looked upon by 
Englishmen as a witch, while the French regarded her as a 
messenger sent from heaven. (2) 

And now the one or two general contemporary histories of 
our period having put us in possession not only of the outline 
and of some of the details of events, but also of the prevailing 
tone of opinion and feeling, we next proceed to a process 
which is indeed not a little laborious, and in many places 
would be impracticable, from the difficulty of obtaining the 
books required. But I am convinced that it is essential to 
be gone through once, if we wish to learn the true method of 



LECTURE I. ' 9*3 

historical investigation : and if done once, for one period, the 
i>enefit of it will be felt in all our future reading, because we 
ishall always know how to explore below the surface, when- 
ever we wish to do so, and we shall be able to estimate 
rightly those popular histories which after all must be our 
ordinary sources of information, except where we find it 
needful to carry on our researches more deeply. And I am 
addressing those who having the benefit of the libraries of 
this place, can really carry into effect, if they will, such a 
course 'of study as I am going to recommend. I cannot in- 
deed too earnestly advise every one who is resident in the 
university to seize this golden time for his own reading, whilst 
he has on the one hand the riches of our libraries at his 
command, and before the pressure of actual life has come 
upon him, when the acquisition of knowledge is mostly out 
of the question, and we must be content to live upon what we 
have already gained. Many and many a time since I ceased 
to be resident in Oxford, has the sense of your advantages 
been forced upon my mind ; for with the keenest love of his- 
torical researches, want of books and want of time have con- 
tinually thrown obstacles in my way ; and to this hour I 
look back with the greatest gratitude to the libraries and 
the comparative leisure of this place, as having enabled 
me to do far more than I should ever have been able to 
effect elsewhere, and amidst the engagements of a pro- 
fession. 

I think therefore that here I may venture to recommend 
what I believe to be the best method of historical reading ; 
for although even here there will be more or less impedi- 
ments in the way of our carrying it out completely, still the 
probability is that some may have both the will and the 
power to do it ; and even an approximation to it, and a re ■■ 
garding it as the standard which we should always be trying 
to reach, will, I think, be found to be valuable. 

9 



98 LECTURE I. 

To proceed therefore with our supposed student's course 
of reading. Keeping the general history which he has beei\ 
reading as his text, and getting from it the skeleton, in a 
manner, of the future figure, he must now break forth excur- 
sively to the right and left, collecting richness and fulness of 
knowledge from the most various sources. For example, we 
will suppose that where his popular historian has mentioned 
that an alliance was concluded between two powers, or a 
treaty of peace agreed upon, he first of all resolves to consult 
the actual documents themselves, as they are to be found in 
some one of the great collections of European treaties, or if 
they are connected with English history, in Rymer's Foedera. 
By comparing the actual treaty with his historian's report of 
its provisions, we get in the first place a critical process of 
some value, inasmuch as the historian's accuracy is at once 
tested : but there are other purposes answered besides. An 
historian's report of a treaty is almost always an abridgment 
of it; minor articles will probably be omitted, and the rest 
condensed, and stripped of all their formal language. But 
our object now being to reproduce to ourselves, so far as is 
possible, the very life of the period which we are studying, 
minute particulars help us to do this ; nay, the very formal 
enumeration of titles, and the specification of towns and dis- 
tricts in their legal style, help to realize the time to us, if it 
be only from their very particularity. Every common his- 
tory records the substance of the treaty of Troyes, May, 1420, 
Jjy which the succession to the crown of France was given 
to Henry the Fifth. But the treaty in itself, or the English 
version of it which Henry sent over to England to be pro 
claimed there, gives a far more lively impression of the tri- 
umphant state of the great conqueror, and the utter weakness 
of the poor French king, Charles the Sixth, in the ostentatious 
care taken to provide for the recognition of his formal title 
during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded to Henry, 



LECTURE I. 9S 

and provision is made Ibr the perpetual union hereafter of the 
two kingdoms under his sole government. 

I have named treaties as the first class of official instru- 
ments to be consulted, because the mention of them occurs 
unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents, 
certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently re- 
ferred to by popular historians, consists of statutes, ordi- 
nances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names 
the laws of each particular period happen to be designated. 
That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred 
to by writers on English history, has always seemed to me 
matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so 
busy in every country as it has been with us, yet everywhere 
and in every period it has done something : evils real or sup- 
posed have always existed, which the supreme power in the 
nation has endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law. 
And under the name of laws I would include the acts of 
councils, which form an important part of the history of Eu- 
ropean nations during many centuries ; provincial councils, 
as you are aware, having been held very frequently, and 
iheir enactments relating to local and particular evils, so that 
they illustrate history in a very lively manner. Now in 
these and all the other laws of any given period, we find in 
the first place from their particularity a great additional help 
towards becoming familiar with the times in which they were 
passed ; we learn the names of various officers, courts, and 
processes f and these, when understood, (and I suppose always 
the habit of reading nothing without taking pains to under- 
stand it,) help us from their very number to realize the state 
of things then existing ; a lively notion of any object depend- 
ing on our clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we 
people it, so to speak, with distinct images, the more it cornea 
to resemble the crowded world around us. But in addition 
to this benefit, which I am disposed to rate in itself very 



100 LEG TIRE I 

highly, every thing of the nature of law has a peculiar in 
terest and value, because it is the expression of the deliberate 
mind of the supreme government of society ; and as history, 
as commonly written, records so much of the passionate and 
unreflecting part of human nature, we are bound in fairness 
to acquaint ourselves with its calmer and better part also. 
And then if we find, as unhappily we often shall find, that 
this calmer and better part was in itself neither good nor 
wise ; that law, which should be the very voice of justice, 
was on the other hand unequal, oppressive, insolent ; that the 
deliberate mind of the ruling spirits of any age was sunk in 
ignorance or perverted by wickedness, then we may feel sure 
that with whatever bright spots to be found here and there, 
the general state of that age was evil. 

I am imprudent perhaps in leading you at the outset of our 
historical studies into a region so forbidding; the large vol- 
umes of treaties and laws with which I have recommended 
the student to become familiar, may seem enough \o crush 
the boldest spirit of enterprise. There is an alchemy, how- 
ever, which can change these apparently dull materials into 
bright gold ; but I must not now anticipate the mention of it. 
I will rather proceed to offer some relief to the student by in- 
viting him next to turn to volumes of a very different charac- 
ter. Some of the great men of an age have in all probability 
left some memorials of their minds behind them, speeches, it 
may be, or letters, or a journal ; or possibly works of a 
deeper character, in which they have handled, exjIVessly and 
deliberately, some of the questions which most interested their 
generation. Now if our former researches have enabled us 
t) people our view of the past with many images of events, 
institutions, usages, titles, &;c., to make up with some com- 
pleteness what may be called the still life of the picture, we 
shall next be anxious to people it also with the images of its 
great individual men, to change it as it were from a land- 



LECTURE I. 101 

scape or a view of buildings, to what may truly be called an 
historical picture. Whoever has made himself famous by 
his actions, or even by his rank or position in society, so that 
his name is at once familiar to our ears, such a man's 
writings have an interest for us even before we begin to read 
them ; the instant that he gets up as it were to address us, 
we are hushed into the deepest attention. These works give 
us an insight not only into the spirit of an age, as exemplified 
in the minds of its greatest men, but they multiply in some 
sort the number of those with whom we are personally and 
individually in sympathy ; they enable us to recognise 
amidst the dimness of remote and uncongenial ages, the fea- 
tures of friends and of brethren. 

But the greatest, or at least the most active men of an age, 
may have left but little behind them in writing ; memorials 
of this kind, however precious, will often be but few. We 
next then consider who those were who were eminent by their 
writings only, v/ho before they began to speak had no pecu- 
liar claim to be heard, but who won and fixed attention by the 
wisdom or eloquence of what they uttered. Or again, to take 
a still lower step, there may have been men who spoke only 
to a limited audience, men of eminence merely in their own 
profession or study, but who within their own precinct were 
listened to, and exercised considerable influence. Yet once 
again, there is a still lower division of literature, there are 
works neither of men great by their actions, nor of men 
proved to be great by these very works themselves ; nor of 
men, who though not great properly in any sense, were yet 
within a certain circle respected and influential ; but works 
written by common persons for commpn persons, works writ- 
ten because the profession, or circumstances, or necessities 
of thfeir authors led them to write, second and third rate 
works of theology, second and third rate political, or legal, 
or philosophical, or literary disquisitions, ordinary histories. 



102 LECTURE I 

poetry of that class which is to a proverb worthless, novels 
and tales which no man reads twice, and only an indiscrimi- 
nate literary voracity would read once. Time gives even to 
this mass of rubbish an accidental value ; what was in its 
lifetime mere moss, becomes in the lapse of ages, after being 
buried in its peat-bed, of some value as fuel ; it is capable of 
yielding both light and heat. And so even the most worth- 
less pieces of the literature of a remote period, contain in 
them both instruction and amusement. The historical student 
should consult such of these as time has spared ; all the four 
divisions of the literature of a period which I have mentioned, 
should engage his attention, not all certainly in an equal de- 
gree, but all are of importance towards that object which at 
this part of his course he is especially pursuing ; the realizing 
to himself, I mean, as vividly and as perfectly as possible, all 
the varied aspects of the period which he is investigating. 

I feel sure that v\^hilst I have been reading the three or four 
last pages, I have been drawing rather largely on your kind 
readiness to put the best construction on my words which 
they will possibly bear. But after all, you must I fear be 
unable to acquit me of great extravagance, in recommending 
the student to make himself acquainted with the whole litera- 
ture of the period of which he wishes to learn the history. 1 
trust, however, to clear myself of this imputation, by ex- 
plaining in what manner so wide a range of reading is really 
practicable. There is no greater confusion than exists in 
many men's notions of deep and superficial reading. It is 
often supposed, I believe, that deep reading consists in going 
through many books from beginning to end, superficial read- 
ing in looking only at .parts of them. But depth and shal. 
lowness have reference properly to our particular object : so 
that the very same amount of reading may be superficial in 
one sense, and deep in another. For example, I want to 
know whether a peculiar mode of expression occurs in a 



LECTURE I. 103 

given writer ; an expression, we will say, supposed to have 
come into existence only at a later period. Now with a view 
to this object, any thing short of an almost complete perusal 
of the writer's works from beginning to end is superficial : 
because I cannot be in a condition to decide the question on 
a partial hearing of the evidence ; and the evidence in this 
case is not any given portion of the author's writings, but the 
whole of them. Again, if I wish to know what a writer has 
said on some one particular subject, and he has written an 
express work on this subject, my reading is not superficial if 
I go through that one work, although I may leave a hundred 
of his works on other subjects unread altogether. Now for 
what purpose is it that we wish to consult the general second- 
rate literature of a period, as an illustration of its history ? 
Is it not in order to discover what- was the prevailing tone 
and taste of men's minds ; how they reasoned ; what ideas 
had most possession of them ; what they knew, and what use 
they made of their knowledge ? For this object, a judicious 
selection following a general survey of the contents of an 
author's works is really quite sufficient. We take the vol- 
ume or volumes of them into our hands ; we look at the con- 
tents, and so learn the subjects and nature of his several 
writings. It may be and often is the case, that amongst them 
we find some letters; on these we should fasten immediately, 
and read through several of them, taking some from differeilt 
periods of his life, if his correspondence run through several 
years. Again, his works may contain treatises, we will say, 
on various subjects ; if he be a theologian, they may contain 
commentaries also on the whole or parts of the Scripture; or 
controversial tracts, or meditations and prayers. Amongst his 
treatises we should select such as must from their subject 
call forth the character of his mind most fully ; and one or 
two of these we should read through. So again, we can test 
kis character as a commentator by consulting him on such 



104 LECTURE I. 

parts of Scripture as necessarily lead to the fullest develop- 
ment of his opinions and knowledge ; and we can deal in a 
similar way with his other writings. If he be an historian, a 
portion of his work will certainly display his historical powers 
sufficiently ; if he be a poet, the strength and character of 
his genius will appear, without our reading every line which 
he has written. It is possible certainly that an estimate so 
formed may not be altogether correct ; we should not value 
Shakespeare sufficiently without being acquainted with all 
his great plays ; yet even in the case of Shakespeare, a 
knowledge of any one of his best tragedies, and any one of 
his best comedies, would give us a notion faithful in kind, 
although requiring to be augmented in degree. But what I 
am saying doss not apply to the works of the very highest 
class of minds, but to the mass of ordinary literature ; and 
surely any one canto of Glover's Leonidas would enable 
us to judge very fairly of the merits and style of the poem ; 
and half a dozen of the letters of Junius would express faith- 
fully the excellencies and faults of the author as a political 
writer, without our being obliged to read through the whole 
volume. (3) 

That, however, is really superficial reading, which dips 
merely into a great many places of a volume at random, and 
studies no considerable portion of it consecutively. One 
whole treatise upon a striking subject may, and will, give us 
an accurate estimate of a writer's powers ; it will exhibit his 
way of handling a question, his fairness or unfairness, his 
judgment, his clearness, his eloquence, or his powers of rea- 
soning. One single treatise out of a great many will show 
us this, but not mere extracts even from many treatises. 
Particular passages selected, whether for good or for bad, are 
really apt to remind one of the brick which the old pedant 
carried about as a specimen of his house. It is vain to judge 
of any writer from isolated quotationsj least of all, when Wf 



LECTURE I. 10a 

want to j^dge of him as illustraiing the views and habits of 
his time. Nothing can be more unsafe than to venture to 
criticise the literature of a period from turning over the pages 
even of the fullest literary history : Tiraboschi is invaluable 
as a book of reference, furnishing us with the number of 
Italian writers who flourished at any one time, and with a 
catalogue raisonnee of their writings ; but a catalogue is to 
guide research, not to supersede it. Besides, quotations made 
from writers to show the character of their opinions, are not 
always to be trusted even for their honesty. One instance 
of this is so remarkable, and affords so memorable a warning, 
that I cannot refrain from noticing it, as it may possibly be 
new to some of my hearers. Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical 
History, gave in one of his notes the following passage from 
the works of Eligius or Eloy, bishop of Noyon in the middle 
of the seventh century, as a specimen of the false notions of 
Christian duty entertained generally at that period, even by 
men of the highest reputed holiness.* R.obertson, in his notes 

* Text of Mosheim. " The Christians of this century (the seventh) seemed 
by their superstitious doctrine to exclude from the kingdom of heaven such as 
had not contributed by their offerings to augment tlie riches of the clergy or 
the church." Century VII. part ii. ch. 3, edit. 8vo. 1806. 

His note is as follows : " S. Eligius or Eloi expresses himself upon this matter 
in the following manner : Bonus Christianus est qui ad ecclesiam frequenter 
venit, et oblationem, quae in altari Deo offeratur, exhibet: qui de fructibus suis 
non gustat nisi prius Deo aliquid oiTerat : qui quoties sanctee solemnitates ad- 
veniunt, ante dies plures castitatem etiara cum propria uxore custodit, ut 
secura conscientia Domini altare accedere possit; qui postremo symbolum 
v^el orationem Dominicam memoriter tenet . . . Redimite animas vestras de 
poena, dum habetis in potestate remedia . . . oblationes et decimas ecclesiia 
offerte, luminaria Sanctis locis, juxta quod habetis, exhibete ... ad ecclesiam 
quoque frequentius convenite, sanctorum patrocinia humiliter expetite . . . 
quod si observaveritis, securi in die judicii ante tribunal seterni judicis veni- 
entes dicetis : Da, Domine, quia dedimus." Maclaine, the English translator, 
then adds this farther note of his own : " We see here a large and ample de- 
scription of the character of a good Christian, in which there is not the least 
mention of the love of God, resignation to his will, obedience to his laws, of 
of justice, benevolence, and charity towards men, and in which tha whole of 
religion is made to consist in coming often to the church, bringing offerings 



106 LECTURE I. 

to his Charles V., borrowed the quotation, to prove, that at 
that period " men instead of aspiring to sanctity and virtue, 

lo the altar, lighting candles in consecrated places, and such like vain ser- 
vices." 

I am glad to say that Schrockh, although he quotes the passage as showing 
now much stress was laid on gifts to the church, yet quotes it quite fairly, 
without garbling, and expressly says before he begins to quote it, " Man muss 
gestehen, dass darunter viel wahres und schriftmassiges vorkommt." Christl 
Kirch. Geschichte. xix Theil. p. 438, ed. 1794. Leipzig. The whole passage 
is as follows : 

" Qui verus Christianus vult esse, hfEC ei necesse est praecepta custodire ; si 
enim non custodit, ipse se circumvenit. lUe itaque bonus Christianus est, qui 
nulla phylacteria vel adinventiones diaboli credit, sed omnera spem suam in 
solo Christo ponit : qui peregrinos tanquam ipsum Christum cum gaudio sus- 
cipit, quia ipse dicit, Hospes fui et suscepistis me ; Et, quando fecistis uni ex 
minimis meis mihi fecistis. Ille inquam bonus Christianus est qui hospitibus 
pedes lavat, et tanquam parentes carissimos diligit, qui juxta quod habet pau- 
peribus eleemosynam tribuit, qui ad ecclesiam frequenter venit, et oblationem 
qusB in altari Deo offeratur exhibet, qui de fructibus suis non gustat, nisi prius 
Deo aliquid ofTerat : qui stateras dolosas et mensuras duplices non habet ; qui 
peouniam suam non dedit ad usuram ; qui ipse caste vivit et filios vel vicinos 
docet, ut caste et cum timore Dei vivant : et quoties sanctse solennitates ad- 
yeniunt ante dies plures castitatem etiam cum propria, uxore custodit, ut 
secura conscientia Domini altare accedere possit : qui postremo symbolum 
vel orationem dominicam memoriter tenet, et filios ac familiam eandem docet. 
Q,ui talis est, sine dubio verus Christianus est, sed et Christus in ipso habitat, 
qui dixit. Ego et pater veniemus et mansionem apud eum faciemus. Similiter 
et per prophetam dixit. Ego mhabitabo in eis et inter iilos ambulabo, et ero 
illorum Deus. 

" Ecce audistis fratres quales sint Christian! boni, ideo quantum potestis cum 
Dei adjutorio laborate, ut nomen Christianum non sit falsum in vobis, sed ut ' 
veri Christiani esse possitis : semper prsecepta Christi et cogitate in mente, et 
implete in operatione. Redimite animas vestras de poena, dum habetis in po- 
testate remedia: eleemosynam juxta vires facite, pacem et charitatein habete, 
discordes ad concordiam revocate, mendacium fugite, perjurium expavescite, 
falsum testimonium non dicite, fui'tum non facite : oblationes et decimas 
ecclesiis offerte, luminaria Sanctis locis juxta quod habetis, exhibete, symbolum 
et orationem Dominicam memoria retinete et filiis vestris insinuate, filios etiam 
quos ex baptismo suscepi«tis docete et castigate ut semper cum timore Dei 
vivant : scitote vos fidejussores pro ipsis apud Deum esse. Ad ecclesiam quo- 
que frequenter convenite, sanctorum patrocinia humiliter expetite ; diem Do- 
minicum pro reverentia resurrectionis Christi absque uUo servili opere colite, 
sanctorum solemnitates pio affectu celebrate, proximos vestros sicut vos ipsos 
diligite : quod vobis vultis ab aliis fieri hoc et vos aliis facite : quod vobis non 
Tultis fieri nuUi facite : charitatem ante omnia liabete, quia charitas operit 



LECTURE I 107 

imagined that they satisfied every obligation of duty by a 
scrupulous observance of external ceremonies." Mr. Hal- 
lam, in the first editions of his work on the Middle Ages, (in 
the later editions the error has been corrected,) transcribed it 
into his account of the state of society, to show that " priests 
made submission to the church not only the condition but the 
measure of all praise." Dr. Waddington, in the text of his 
History of the Church, had referred to the self-same passage, 
which he gave accordingly, still copied from Mosheim, in a 
note at the foot of his page. But being led to inquire a little 
more fully into the matter, he found the whole passage in 
D'Acheri's Spicilegium Veterum Scriptorum, (D'Acheri was 
one of the learned French Benedictines of the seventeenth 
century,) and there he discovered that the quotation in Mo- 
sheim, which Robertson, and Mr. Hallam, and himself had 
all copied from him in reliance on its fidelity, was utterly 
garbled, as you will see for yourselves when I read it to you 
at length. Here then is Eligius quoted by successive histo- 
rians as proving what his I'eal words do in fact effectually 



multitudinem peccatorum : estote hospitales, humiles, omnem solicitudinem 
vestram ponentes in Deum, quoiiiam ipsi cura est de vobis. Infirmos visitate, 
carceratfj3 requirite, peregrines suscipite, esurientes pascite, nudos vestite. 
Arioios et magos spernite : sit vobis asqualitas in pondere et mensura : sit 
Btatera justa, Justus modius, sequusque sextarius, nee plusquam dedistis repe- 
tatis, neque usuras pro fenerata pecmiia a quoquam exigatis. Quod si obser- 
vaveritis, secmi in die judicii ante tribunal setemi judicis venientes dicetis, 
Da Domine, quia dedimus ; miserere, quia misericordiam fecimus ; nos im- 
plevimus quod jussisti, tu redde quod promisisti." 

I am only concerned with this passage as an instance of great misrepresen- 
tation : there is enough really bad in Eligius's theology to make it unnecessarj- 
to make it worse ; and after all, how far it is Eligius's doctrine or not is very 
questionable ; for the author of his Life merely professes to give the substance 
of his general teaching, to which he devotes eleven folio pages of double col- 
umns. It does not appear that it is more than a vague traditional impression 
of what he used to say ; and the Life in which it appears, though professing to 
be written oy S. Ouen, has been greatly interpolated, according to Baluze, by 
B later hand. The above extract has ber^n made from Baluze's edillon of 
D'Achery, 3 vols. foUo. Paris, 1723. Vol. ii. pp. 9G, 97. 



108 le.;ture i. 

disprove Well might Niebuhr protest against the practice 
of making quotations at second hand, instead of going our- 
selves to the original source. To do this is indeed a sort 
of superficial reading which we cannot be too careful to 
avoid. (4) 

You will therefore, I trust, acquit me of recommending 
any thing which really deserves the name of superficial read- 
ing ; and yet I think that by following the method which 1 
have suggested, we may arrive at a very just and full know-' 
ledge of the character of the literature of a period, and thereby 
of the period itself, without undergoing any extravagant 
burden of labor, or sacrificing an undue portion of time. 
And by such means, followed up still farther by those who 
have a taste for such studies, by inquiring into the state of 
art, ^whether in painting, sculpture, or architecture, or as 
exemplified in matters of common life, we may I think imbue 
ourselves effectually with the spirit of a period, no less than 
with the actual events which it witnessed ; we may be able 
to image it to ou r minds in detail, and conceive of it as of an 
object with which we are really familiar. 

But is our work now done ? Is this full and distinct im- 
pression of the events, characters, institutions, manners, and 
ways of thinking of any period, that true historical knowledge 
which we require ? The answer at once is " No." What 
we have attained to is no more than antiquarianism, an indis- 
pensable element in history, but not history itself. Anti- 
quarianism is no teacher of wisdom ; on the contrary, few 
things seem more to contract and enfeeble the mind, few 
things differ more widely from that comprehensive view 
which becomes the true historian. And this is a point so 
important that I must venture to dwell upon it a little more 
particularly. 

What is it that the mere antiquarian wants, and which the 
meie scholar wants also ; so that satire, sagacious enough in 



LECTURE I. 109 

detecting the weak points of every character, has often held 
them both up to ridicule ? They have wanted what is the 
essential accompaniment to all our knowledge of the past, a 
lively and extensive knowledge of the present ; they wanted 
tne habit of continually viewing the two in combination with 
each other ; they wanted that master power, which enables 
us to take a point from which to contemplate both at a dis* 
tance, and so to judge of each and of both as if we belonged 
to neither. For it is from the views so obtained, from the con- 
clusions so acquired, that the wisdom is formed which may 
really assist in shaping and preparing the course of the future. 
Antiquarianism, then, is the knowledge of the past enjoyed 
by one who has no lively knowledge of the present. Thence 
it is, when concerned with great matters, a dull knowledge. 
It may be lively in little things, it may conceive vividf^ the 
shape and color of a dress, or the style of a building, because 
no man can be so ignorant as not to have a distinct notion of 
these in his own times ; he must have a full conception of 
the coat he wears and the house he lives in. But the past 
is reflected to us by the present ; so far as we see and under- 
stand the present, so far we can see and understand the past : 
so far but no farthe"-. And this is the reason why scholars 
and antiquarians, nay, and men calling themselves historians 
also, have written so uninstructively of the ancient world : 
they could do no otherwise, for they did not understand the- 
world around them. How can he comprehend the parties of 
other days, who has no clear notion of those of his own ? What 
sense can he have of the progress of the great contest of human 
affairs in its earlier stages, when it rages around him at this 
actual moment unnoticed, or felt to be no more than a mere 
indistinct hubbub of sounds and confusion of weapons ? — 
what cause is at issue in the combat he knows not. Whereas 
on the other hand, he who feels his own times keenly, to 
whom they are a positive reality, with a good and evil dis- 



110 J.ECTURE I. 

tinctly perceived in them, such a man will write a lively 
and impressive account of past times, even though his know- 
ledge be insufficient, and his prejudices strong. This I think 
is the merit of Mitford, and it is a great one. His very anti- 
jacobin partialities, much as they have interfered with the 
fairness of his history, have yet completely saved it from 
being dull. He took an interest in the parses of Greece 
because he was alive to the parties of his own time : he 
described the popular party in Athens just as he would have 
described the whigs of England ; he was unjust to Demos- 
thenes because he would have been unjust to Mr. Fox. His 
knowledge of the Greek language was limited, and so was 
his learning altogether ; but because he was an English 
gentleman who felt and understood the state of thino-s around 
him,^nd entered warmly into its parties, therefore he wag 
able to write a history of Greece, which has the great charm 
of reality ; and which, if I may judge by my own experience, 
is read at first with interest and retains its hold firmly on the 
memory. (5) 

This is an example of what I mean ; an4 it were easy to 
add others. Raleigh had perhaps less learning than Mitford ; 
he had at no time of his life the leisure or the opportunity to 
collect a great store of antiquarian knowledge. But he had 
seen life in his own times extensively, and entered keenly 
into its various pursuits. Soldier, seaman, court favorite, I 
am afraid we must add, intriguer, war and policy were per- 
fectly familiar to him. His accounts therefore of ancient 
affairs have also a peculiar charm ; they too are a reality ; 
he entered into the difficulties of ancient generals from 
remembering what he had himself experienced ; he related 
their gallant actions with all his heart, recollecting what he 
had himself seen and done. (6) Now I am well aware that 
this lively notion of our own times is extraneous to any course 
of historical study, and depends on other causes than those 



LEf.TURE 1. Ill 

»vith which we are concerned now. And farther, evea under 
favorable circumstancesj it can scarcely be attained in 
perfection by a young man, whose experience of life and its 
business is necessarily scanty. But where it does not exist, 
it is of importance that we should be aware of the greatness 
of tlie defect, and to take care lest while it destroys the benefit 
of our historical studies, they in their turn should aggravate 
it, and thus each should go on with an effect reciprocally 
injurious. And we should try, if not by the most effectual 
means then by some of inferior virtue, to prevent our historical 
studies from becoming mere antiquarianism. Accordingly, 
after having made ourselves familiar with the spirit of any 
given period from a study of the different writers of the period 
itself, we should turn to a history of it written by a modern 
writer, and observe how its peculiarities accord with those of 
a different age, and what judgment is passed by posterity 
upon its favorite views and practices. It does not follow that 
this judgment is to be an infallible guide to ours, but it is 
useful to listen to it, for in some points it will certainly be 
true, and its very difference from the judgment of our earlier 
period, even where it runs into an opposite extreme, is of 
itself worth attending to. And thus by seeing what was 
underrated once receiving its due and perhaps more than its 
due honor at a subsequent period, and by observing that 
v/hat is now unjustly slighted was in times past excessively 
overvalued, we shall escape that Quixotism of zeal, whether 
for or against any particular institution, which is apt to be 
the resuU of a limited knowledge ; as if what we now find 
over honored or too much despised, had never undergone the 
opposite fate ; as if it were for us now to redress for the first 
time the injustice of fortune, and to make up by the vehe- 
mence of our admiration for centuries of contempt, or by oui 
scorn for centuries of blind veneration. 

We may hope that such a comparison of the views of dif 



112 LECTURE I. 

ferent periods will save us from one of the besetting faults 
of minds raised a little above the mass, but not arrived at 
any high pitch of wisdom ; I mean the habit either of sneer- 
ino- at or extravagantly exalting the age in which we our- 
selves live. At the same time I am inclined to think that 
although both are faulty, yet the temptation is far greater to 
undervalue our own age than to overvalue it. I am not 
speaking, be it observed, of the mass of mere ordinary 
minds, but of those which possess some portion of intelli- 
gence and cultivation. Our personal superiority seems 
much more advanced by decrying our contemporaries than 
by decrying our fathers. The dead are not our real ri- 
vals, nor is pride very much gratified by asserting a su- 
periority over those who cannot deny it. But if we run 
down the living, that is, those with w^hom our whole com- 
petition exists, what do we but exalt ourselves, as having 
at any rate that great mark of superior wisdom, that we 
discern deficiency where others find nothing but matter of 
admiration. It is far more tempting to personal vanity to 
think ourselves the only wise amongst a generation of fools, 
than to glory in belonging to a wise generation, where our 
personal wisdom, be it what it may, cannot at least have the 
distinction of singularity. 

Thus far then we seem to have proceeded in our outline 
of the course of reading to be pursued by the historical stu- 
dent. It has combined at present two points, a full know- 
ledge of the particular period which we choose to study, as 
derived from a general acquaintance with its contemporary 
literature, and then what I may call a knowledge of its bear- 
ings with respect to other and later periods, and not least 
with respect to our own times ; that is to say, how succeed- 
ing ages have judged of it, how far their sympathies have 
gone along with its own in admiring what it admired ; and 
as collected from this judgment, how far it coloured the times 



LECTURE I 113 

which followed il ; in other words, what part it has played 
for good or for evil in the great drama of the world's his- 
tory ; what of its influence has survived and what has per- 
ished. And he who has so studied and so understood one 
period, deserves the praise generally of understanding his- 
tory. For to know all history actually is impossible ; our 
object should be to possess the power of knowing any portion 
of history which we wish to learn, at a less cost of labour 
and with far greater certainty of success than belong to oth- 
er men. For by our careful study of some one period, we 
have learnt a method of proceeding with all ; so that if we 
open any history, its facts at once fall into their proper 
places, indicating their causes, implying their consequences ; 
we have gained also a measure of their value, teaching us 
what are productive, and what are barren, what will com- 
bine with other facts, and establish and illustrate a truth, and 
what in our present state of knowledge are isolated, of no 
worth in themselves, and leading to nothing. This will be 
still more apparent, when we come to examine more care- 
fully our student's process in mastering the history of any 
one period ; for hitherto, you will observe, I have said no- 
thing of the difficulties or questions which will occur to him 
in his reading ; I have only said generally what he should 
read. 

I purpose then in the following lectures to notice some of 
the principal difficulties or questions which the historical 
student will encounter, whether the period which he has 
chosen belong to the times of imperfect or of advanced civili- 
zation : for the questions in each of these are not altogether 
the same. And I will begin with the difficulties presented 
by the history of a period of imperfect civilization. 



NOTES 



TO 



L E C T U R fi 



Note 1.— Page 96. 

Thougli Lord Clarendon has not preserved the dialect of James 
(he First, the drimatic form of several passages in the first book 
of his History gives a very life-like notion of the King's familiar 
conversation — the coarse mind and manners distinctly reflected in 
the coarseness and voluble profanity of his speech. 

Note 2.— Page 96. 

" The fate of Joan in literature has been strange, — almost as 
strange as her fate in life. The ponderous cantos of Chapelain in 
her praise have long since perished — all but a few lines that live 
embalmed in the satires of Boileau. But besides Schiller's power- 
ful drama, two considerable narrative poems yet survive with Joan 
of Arc for their subject : the epic of Southey, and the epic of Vol- 
taire. The one, a young poet's earnest and touching tribute to he- 
roic worth — ^the first flight of the muse that was ere long to soar 
over India and Spain ; the other full of ribaldry and blasphemous 
jests, holding out the Maid of Orleans as a fitting mark for slander 
and derision. But from whom did these far dijfferent poems pro- 
ceed 1 The shaft of ridicule came from a French — the token of 
respect from an English — hand ! 

* * * " Who that has ever trodden the gorgeous galleries of Ver- 
sailles, has not fondly lingered before that noble work of art — be- 
fore that touching impersonation of thB Christian heroine — the head 
meekly bended, and the hands devoutly clasping the sword ia sign 
of the cross, but firm resolution imprinted on that close-pressed 



NOTES TO LECTURE I. 115 

mouth, and beaming from that lofty brow ! Whose thoughts, as he 
paused to gaze and gaze again, might not sometimes wander from 
old times to the present, and turn to the sculptress — sprung from 
the same royal lineage which Joan had risen in arms to restore — 
so highly gifted in talent, in fortunes, in hopes of happiness, yet 
doomed to an end so grievous and untimely"? Thus the statue has 
grown to be a monument, not only to the memory of the Maid, but 
to her own : thus future generations in France — all those at least 
who know how to prize either genius or goodness in woman — will 
love to blend together the two names, the female artist and the 
female warrior — Mary of Wurtemberg and Joan of Arc." 

Quar. Review, vol. Ixix., p. 328, March, 1842, 

Note 3.— Page 104. 

" Keep your view of men and things extensive, and depend upon 
it that a mixed knowledge is not a superficial one ; — as far as it 
goes, the views that it gives are true, — but he who reads deeply in 
one class of writers only, gets views which are almost sure to be 
perverted, and which are not only narrow but false. Adjust your 
proposed amount of reading to your time and inclination — ^this is 
perfectly free to every man, but whether that amount be large or 
small, let it be varied in its kind, and widely varied. If I have a 
confident opinion on any one point connected with the improvement 
of the human mind, it is on this." 

Life and Correspondence, Letter cev., Am. edition, 357, 

" It is a very hard thing to read at once passionately and critic- 
ally, by no means to be cold, captious, sneering, or scoffing ; to ad- 
mire greatness and goodness with an intense love and veneration, 
yet to judge all things ; to be the slave neither of names nor of 
parties, and to sacrifice even the most beautiful associations for the 
sake of truth. I would say, as a good general rule, never read the 
works of any ordinary man, except on scientific matters, or when 
they contain simple matters of fact. Even on matters of fact, silly 
and ignorant men, however honest and industrious in their particu- 
lar subject, require to be read with constant watchfulness and sus- 
picion ; whereas great men are always instructive, even amidst 
much of error on particular points. In general, however, I hold it 



116 NOTES 

to be certain, that the truth is to be found in the great men, and tho 
error in the little ones." 

Life and Correspondence, Letter xcviii.. Am edit. p. 245. 

Note 4.— Page 108. 

This case of the traditional misrepresentation of St. Eligius and 
of the times he lived in has been even more completely and con- 
clusively treated by Mr. Maitland, in one of the numbers (vii.) of 
his vs^ork entitled " The Dark Ages,''"' — a volume in which the gen- 
uine learning and the dauntless love of truth, that were needed to 
expose old habitual falsehood, are happily united with much ap- 
propriate pleasantness of thought and with true and well-directed 
satire. He remarks that the sermon which was mutilated seems 
almost as if it had been written in anticipation of all and each of 
Mosheim's and Maclaine's charges, and he quotes the observations 
of the Jate Hugh James Rose, by whom it was well said : 

" Here we find not only an individual traduced, but, through him, 
the religious character of a whole age misrepresented, and this 
misrepresentation now generally believed. We find men leaving out 
what a writer says, and then reproaching him and his age for not 
saying it. We find Mosheim, Maclaine, Robertson, Jortin, White, 
mangling, misusing, and (some of them) traducing a writer whose 
works not one of them, except Mosheim, (if even he,) had ever 
seen. These things are very serious. We may just as well, or 
better, not read at all, if we read only second-hand writers, or do 
not take care that those whom we do trust read for themselves, 
and report honestly. We, in short, trust a painter who paints that 
black which is lohite, and then think we have a clear idea of the 
object." 

This is a case that cannot be too strongly condemned, for it is but 
one of many examples that might, with little pains, be collected, of 
the vicious habit of unacknowledged quotation at second hand, or a1 
some even more remote degree from the original — a vicious habit, 
for at least two reasons : that it is a frequent cause of historicLl 
error, gaining authority by the activity of falsehood ; and that it is 
the ready device by which the superficial and the uncandid caD 
make a false display. 



TO LECTURE I. 117 



Note 5. — Page 110. 

It is to Mitford and his history that Bishop Thirlwall alludes 
cvhen, in a note in his History of Greece, he speaks of " a writer 
who considers it as the great business of history to place royalty in 
the most favourable light ;" and in another note, he speaks of " a 
work which, though cast in an historical form, is intended not to 
give historical" information, but to state opinions, and then to give 
such facts as square with them." 

Note 6.— Page 110. 

In Raleigh's History of the World, says Mr. Hallam, " the 
Greek and Roman story is told more fully and exactly than by any 
earlier English author, and with a plain eloquence, which has given 
this book a classical reputation in our language, though from its 
length, and the want of that critical sifting of facts which we now 
justly demand, it is not greatly read. Raleigh has intermingled 
political reflections, and illustrated his history by episodes from 
modern tlraes, which perhaps are now the most interesting pas- 
sages.'' 

Introduction to Literature of Europe, vol. iii p. 657 



LECTURE II. 



The first step which I ventured to recommend in the study 
of the history of any period, was, that we should take some 
one contemporary historian, and if we were studying the 
history of any one country in particular, then It should be 
also an historian of that country, and that we should so gain 
our first introduction both to the events and to the general 
character of the times. I am now to consider what difficul- 
ties and what questions will be likely to present themselves 
in reading such an historian, interfering, if not answered, 
with our deriving from him all the instruction which he is 
capable of rendering. Now you will observe that I am pur- 
posely looking out for the difficulties in history, but I am 
very far from professing to be able to solve them. Still I 
think that what I am doing may be very useful : because tc 
direct attention to what is to be done is the best means of 
procuring that it shall be done. And farther, an enterprising 
student will be rather encouraged by hearing that the work 
is not all done to his hands ; he will be glad to find that 
the motto upon history, in spite of all that has been lately 
accomplished, is still " Plus ultra :" the actual boundary 
reached is not the final one ; every bold and able adventurer 
in this wide ocean may hope to obtain the honours of a dis- 
coverer of countries hitherto unknown. 

In the first place I said that the difficulties and questions 
which occurred in reading an historian of a period of imper- 
fect civilization, were not in all respects the same which we 



120 LECTURE II. 

should meet with in an historian of a more advanced age. 
This leads me naturally to consider what constitutes the dif- 
ference between these two classes of historians, before I pro- 
ceed to the proper subject of this lecture, the questions 
namely suggested by the former class, or those of a period 
imperfectly civilized. 

There are some persons whose prejudices are so violent 
against their own age, and that immediately preceding it, 
that they take offence at their claim to a higher civilization, 
and will by no means allow the earlier centuries of modern 
history to have been their inferiors in this respect. For my 
own part, I should find it very difficult, even if I thought it 
desirable, to relinquish the habitual language of our age ; 
which calls itself civilized, and the middle ages as in com- 
parison half civilized, not in the spirit of controversy or of 
boasting, but as a simple matter of fact. However, I do not 
wish to assume any conclusion at the outset which may be 
supposed to be disputable ; and therefore, I will not if I can 
help it use the terms more or less civilized as applied to the 
earlier or later periods of modern history, but will state the 
difference between them in more neutral language. For that 
there is a difference will scarcely I think be disputed : or 
that this difference coincides chronologically, or nearly so, 
with the sixteenth century ; so that the historians prior to 
this period up to the very beginning of modern history, have, 
speaking generally, one character ; and those who flourished 
subsequently to it have another. And farther, I cannot think 
it disputable, that the great historians of Greece and Rome 
resemble for the most part the historians of the last two or 
three centuries, and differ from those of the early or middle 
ages. 

Now without using the invidious words, " civilized" or 
** half civilized," the difference may be stated thus ; that the 
writers of the early and middle ages belonged to a period in 



LECTURE II. 121 

which the active elements were fewer, and the views gene- 
rally prevalent were therefore fewer also. Fewer in two 
ways, first inasmuch as the classes or orders of society which 
expressed themselves actively in word or deed were fewer ; 
and then, as there were very much fewer individual varieties 
amongst members of the same class. Hence therefore the 
history of the early ages is simple ; that of later times is 
complicated. In the former the active elements were kings, 
popes, bishops, lords, and knights, with exceptions here and 
there of remarkable individuals ; but generally speaking 
the other elements of society were passive. In later 
times, on the other hand, other orders of men have been 
taking their part actively ; and the number of these ap- 
pears to be continually increasing. So that the number 
of views of human life, and the number of agencies at work 
upon it, are multiplied ; the difficulty of judging between 
them all theoretically is very great : that of adjusting their 
respective claims practically is almost insuperable. Again, 
in later times, the individual differences between members of 
the same class or order have been far greater; for while the 
common class or professional influence has still been power- 
ful, yet the restraint from without having been removed, 
which forced the individual to abstain from disputing that 
influence, the tendencies of men's individual minds have 
worked freely, and where these were strong, they have mod*- 
ified the class or professional influence variously, and have 
thus produced a great variety of theories on the same sub- 
ject. The introduction of new classes or bodies of men into 
the active elements of society may be exemplified by the in- 
creased importance in later times of the science of political 
economy, while the individual variety amongst those of the 
same order is shown by the various theories which have been 
advanced at different times by different economical writers. 
This will explain what I mean, when I divide the historians 

11 



122 LECTURE II 

of modern history into tWo classes, and when I call the one 
class, that belonging to a simpler state of things ; and the 
other that belonging to a state more complicated. 

We are now, you will remember, concerned with the wri- 
ters of the first class ; and as a specimen of these in theii 
simplest form, we will take the Church History of the Ven. 
arable Bede. This work has been lately published, 1838, in 
a convenient form, 1 vol. 8vo, by the English Historical So- 
ciety ; and it is their edition to which my references have 
been made. I need scarcely remind you of the date and 
circumstances of Bede's life. Born in 674, only fifty years 
after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, he died at the age 
of sixty-one, in 735, two or three years after that great vic- 
tory of Charles Martel over the Saracens, which delivered 
France and Europe from Mahometan conquest. At seven 
years old he was placed under the care of the abbot of 
Wearmouth, and from that monastery he removed to the 
neighbouring one of Jarrow, and there passed the remainder 
of his life. He was ordained deacon in his nineteenth year, 
and priest in his thirtieth, and beyond these two events we 
know nothing of his external life except his writings. These 
are various, and he himself, at the conclusion of his Eccle- 
siastical History, has left us a list of them : — they consist of 
commentaries on almost all the books of Scripture, of trea- 
tises on some scriptural subjects, of religious biographies, of 
a book of hymns ; and of some of a different character, on 
general history and chronology, a book de orthographia, and 
another de metrica arte. His Ecclesiastical History, in five 
books, embraces the period from Augustine's arrival in 597, 
down to the year 731, only four years before his own death; 
so that for a considerable portion of the time to which it re- 
lates his work is a contemporary history. 

In Bede we shall find no political questions of any kind tc 
create any difKculty, nor are there those varied details cf 



LECTURE II. 123 

war and peace which, before they can be vividly compre- 
hended, require a certain degree of miscellaneous knowledge. 
[ may notice then in him one or two things which belong 
more or less to all history. First, his language. We derive, 
or ought to derive from our philological studies, a great ad- 
vantage in this respect ; we ought to have acquired in some 
degree the habit of regarding language critically, and of in- 
terpreting it correctly. This is not a trifling matter ; for 
as an immense majority of histories must be written in a 
foreign language, it is very possible for a careless reader, 
who has never been trained as we have been from our earliest 
years in grammatical analysis, to make important mistakes 
as t8 the meaning of his author ; for translation, to be thor- 
oughly good, must be a matter of habit, and must be grounded 
on such a minutely accurate process as we are early trained 
to in our study of Greek and Latin writers. It must be 
grounded on such a process, the great value of which is, that 
it hinders us from neglecting little words, conjunctions espe- 
cially, on which so large a portion of the meaning of contin- 
uous writing depends, and which a careless reader not so 
trained is apt to pass over. But there is a higher step in 
translation which is by no means a mere matter of ornament, 
and which I believe is not always attended to as it deserves 
even amongst ourselves. I mean translation as distinguished 
from construing ; a process which retains all the accuracy 
of the earlier habit ; its searching view into every corner, so 
to speak, of the passage to be translated ; its appreciation of 
every little word, of every shade of distinction in mood or 
tense ; but from this accuracy makes its way to another slii, 
more perfect — the exact expression of the mind of the original, 
so that the feelings excited by the translation, the images 
conveyed by the words, the force of their arrangement, their 
tone, whether serious or half playful, should be the exact re- 
presentation of the original. And in this greater accuracy 



124 LECTURE II. 

construing must always be deficient, because the grammati- 
cal order of one language is not the same as that of another, 
and to keep the real order, which is of great importance to the 
fidelity of the translation, the grammatical order must often be 
sacrificed. I have ventured to say thus much, because I have 
continually had occasion to feel the difficulty of good transla- 
tion, and because in this respect our admirable classical system 
is apt, I think, to forego one of its great advantages, that in the 
habit of viva voce translation, as opposed to construing, we have 
an exercise at once in the two great subjects of grammar and 
rhetoric — an exercise in extempora,neous composition in our 
own language to which none other is comparable, no less than 
an exercise in the language from which we are translating. (1) 
To return, however, to the language of Bede. We in one 
way may have a source of error peculiarly our own ; that is, 
our almost exclusive familiarity with classical Latin is some- 
times apt to mislead us, when we transfer its rules, and its 
senses of words, without hesitation, to the Latin of what are 
called the low or middle ages. As a single and very familiar 
instance of the difference between classical Latin and low 
Latin, I may notice the perpetual usage of the conjunction 
^^ quia" in the latter in the sense of the Greek oVj. "Nosti 
quia ad tui oris imperium semper vivere studui," " Thou 
knowest that I have ever been careful to live in obedience to 
thy words ;" iv. 29. This occurs in the Latin of unclassical 
writers continually. I do not know what is the earliest in- 
stance of it, but it is frequent in the Latin version of the 
Scriptures which was used by the western churches before 
Jerome's time, and in the old Latin translation of Irenseus. 
Facciolati gives no instance of it in any classical writer, ex- 
cept we choose to bestow that title on Palladius, one of the 
agricultural writers, whose date is not known, but who cer- 
tainly did not flourish earlier than the third century, or the 
very end of the second, inasmuch as he quotes Apuleius, who 



LECTURE II. 125 

lived under M. Aurelius Antoninus. Besides this, it is always 
worth while in reading the Latin of the lower ages, to observe 
the gradual introduction of words of Barbarian origin, such as 
scabini, scaccarium, marchio, hatallum, and innumerable others 
of which the pages of Ducange are full. But of these, very 
few, perhaps no certain instance, is to be found in Bede. 

Another question comes before us in the history of Bede, 
which also is common to all history, although in him and in 
the other writers of the middle ages it often takes a peculiar 
form. I mean the great question of the trustworthiness of 
historians ; on what grounds and to what degree we may 
venture to yield our belief to what we read in them. In 
Bede and in many others the question takes this form. What 
credit is to be attached to the frequent stories of miracles or 
of wonders which occur in. their narratives ? And it is this 
peculiar form of it which I would wish to notice now. The 
question is not an easy one, and I must here remind you of 
what I said at the beginning of this lecture, that while point 
ing out the difficulties of history, I was very far from pro 
fessing to be able always to solve them. 

You will, I think, allow that the difficulty here relates 
much more to miracles than to mere wonders. By the term 
miracle we imply I think two things which do not exist in 
mere wonders ', two things, or perhaps more properly one, 
that God is not only the author of the wonderful work, but 
that it is wrought for us to observe and be influenced by it ; 
whereas a wonder is no doubt God's work also, but it is not 
wrought so far as we can discern for our sakes; so far as we 
are concerned it is a work without an object. Being there- 
fore wholly ignorant of the nature and object of wonders, and 
being ignorant of a great many natural laws, by whicli they 
may be produced, the question of their credibility resolves 
itself into little more than a mere question as to the credibility 
of the witnesses ; there is little room for considerations of 



126 LECTURE II. 

internal evidence as to the time and circumstances when the 
wonder is said to have happened. The internal evidence 
only comes in with respect to our knowledge of the law, 
which the wonder is supposed to violate : in proportion to our 
observations of its comprehensiveness and its unbroken ob- 
servance, would be our unwillingness to believe that it had 
been ever departed from. And thus I suppose that any de- 
viation from the observed laws with respect to the heavenly 
bodies, as, for instance, to the time of the sun's rising or set- 
ting, if we looked upon it as a mere wonder and not as a 
miracle, we should scarcely be persuaded by any weight 
of evidence to believe : or to speak more correctly, if the 
weight of evidence were overwhelmingly great, we should be 
obliged to regard the phenomenon as a miracle, and not as a 
wonder ; as a sign given by God for our instruction. But in 
a great number of cases, we may admit the existence of a 
wonder without seeing any reason to conclude that it is a 
miracle. A man may appear ridiculous if he expresses his 
belief in any particular story of this sort to those who know 
nothing of it but its strangeness. And there is no doubt that 
human folly and human fraud are mixed up largely with 
most accounts of wonders, and render it our duty to receive 
them not with caution merely, but with unwillingness and 
suspicion. Yet to say that all recorded wonders are false, 
from those recorded by Herodotus down to the latest reports 
of animal magnetism, would be a boldness of assertion wholly 
unjustifiable and extravagant. The accounts of wonders 
then, from Livy's prodigies downwards, I should receive ac- 
cording to Herodotus's expression when speaking of one of 
them, ovTZ d'n'Kfrsuv, ovrs ^irKfrsuuv ri Xj'tjv : sometimes consid- 
ering of what fact they were an exaggerated or corrupted repre- 
sentation, at other times trying to remember whether any and 
how many other notices occur of the same thing, and whethei 
they are of force enough to lead us to search for some law 



LECTURE II. 12? 

fiitherto undiscovered, to which they may all be referred, and 
become hereafter the foundation of a new science. (2) 

But when a wonderful thing is represented as a miracle, 
the question becomes far graver and far more complicated. 
Moral and religious considerations then come in unavoidably, 
and involve some of the deepest questions of theology. Whal 
is reported as a miracle may be either the answer to the be- 
lieving prayer of a Christian, or it may be the working of one 
of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, or it may be a special sign 
sent from God for a special mercy or judgment in the par- 
ticular case, and for the instruction and warning of others. 
And whichever of these kinds it may be, the question fol- 
lows, why then are miracles not performed in every age and 
in every Christian country ? And if they are not, are the 
ages and countries thus excepted, to be considered as having 
fallen away from the faith, and to have forfeited what is 
properly a perpetual privilege of Christianity, to have God 
visibly and sensibly near to us ? Say that we acquiesce in 
this conclusion, yet proceeding to regard the question in this 
point of view, is it embarrassed with no difficulties ? Is it 
possible to deny that the individuals, the churches, and the 
times, which appear to have been left without miracles, have 
displayed other and even more unquestionable signs of God's 
presence amongst them ; signs which have not always existed 
with peculiar brightness where miracles are alleged to have 
most abounded ? Or again, Can it be denied that the times 
and the writers where these miraculous accounts are to be 
found, were generally, as compared with those where they 
are wanting, apt to take little pains in their examination of 
truth, of such truth, I mean, as their previous state of mind 
did not dispose them to question ? We see this from their 
accounts of points of natural history ; how few of these can 
be depended upon, and what extravagant and palpable fables 
were transmitted from generation to generation ! It is enough 



128 LECTURE II. 

lo notice the famous story of the barnacle-tree, which dropped 
its fruit into the water, and the fruit cracked, and out swam 
a gosling. Bede's accounts of natural objects are few, but it 
so happens that one of these relates to a place with which I 
have been acquainted all my life, and its incorrectness is re- 
markable. He says that in the Solent sea, which separates 
the Isle of Wight from Hampshire, " two tides of the ocean, 
breaking forth round Britain from the boundless Northern 
ocean, meet every day in mutual conflict with each other 
beyond the mouth of the river of Homelea, (Hamble,) and 
after their conflict is over they sweep back to the ocean, and 
return to the place from whence they came."* Who could 
recognise in this description the sort of race which runs at 
certain times of the tide, and in rough weather, over the 
shoal called the Brambles, or the slight agitation sometimes 
produced, not by the conflicting tides of the Solent sea itself, 
but by the ebb of the Southampton or Hamble river meeting 
at an angle with the tide of the Solent ? We have to weigh 
then this fact in the character of Bede and other such histo- 
rians, and this, added to the religious difficulty noticed above, 
may incline us rather to take the opposite conclusion, and 
limiting miracles to the earliest times of Christianity, refuse 
our belief to all those which are reported by the historians 
of subsequent centuries. 

Yet, again,' this conclusion has its difficulties. We may 
not like to refuse assent to so many statements of so many 
writers, of men, so far as we know, who believe that they 
were speaking the truth. And we may be taxed with incon- 
sistency in stopping our scepticism arbitrarily as it may seem 
when we arrive at the first century, and according to the 
miracle^ of the Gospels that belief which we refuse to those 
of ecclesiastical history. This last charge, however, we may 

* Histor. Ecclesiast i\. 16. 



LECTURE II. 129 

satisfactorily repel. The miracles of the Gospel and those 
of later history do not stand on the same gromid. I do not 
think that they stand on the same ground of external evi- 
dence ; I cannot think that the unbelieving spirit of the Roman 
world in the first century was equally favorable ^o the origi- 
nation and admission of stories of miracles, with the credu- 
lous tendencies of the middle ages. But the difference goes 
far deeper than this to all those who can appreciate the other 
evidences of Christianity, and who there fere feel that in the 
one case what we call miracles were but the natural accom- 
paniments, if I may so speak, of the Christian revelation ; 
accompaniments, the absence of which would have been far 
more wonderful than their presence. This, as I may almost 
call it, this a priori probability in favour of the miracles of 
the Gospel cannot be said to exist in favour of those of later 
history. 

Disembarrassed then of this painful parallel, and able to 
judge freely of the miraculous stories of Bede and other his- 
torians, without feeling our whole Christian faith to rest on 
the decision, it will not however follow, as some appear to 
think, that we shall riot as it were in a full license of unbe- 
lief, or that a reasonable mind will exercise no belief in re- 
ligious matters except such as it dares not withhold. Some 
appear to be unable to conceive of belief or unbelief except 
as having some ulterior object ; " we believe this, because 
we love it ; we disbelieve it, because we wish it to be dis- 
proved." There is, however, in minds more healthfully 
constituted, a belief and a disbelief grounded solely upon the 
evidence of the case, arising neither out of partiality nor out 
of prejudice against the supposed conclusions which may re- 
suit from its truth or falsehood. And in such a spirit the 
historical student will consider the cases of Bede's and other 
historians' miracles. He will, I think, as a general rule dis- 
believe them ; for the immense multitude which he finds re- 



130 LECTURE II. 

corded, and which I suppose no credulity could believe Ihj 
shows sufficiently that on this point there was a total want 
of judgment and a blindness of belief generally existiiig 
which makes the testimony wholly insufficient; and while the 
external evidence in favour of these alleged miracles is so 
unsatisfactory, there are, for the most part, strong internal 
improbabilities against them. But with regard to some mir- 
acles, he will see that there is no strong a priori improbability 
in their occurrence, but rather the contrary ; as, for instance, 
where the first missionaries of the Gospel in a barbarous 
countr;^ are said to have been assisted by a manifestation of 
the spirit of power, and if the evidence appears to w^arrant 
his belief, he will readily and gladly yield it. And in doing 
so he will have the countenance of a great man,* who in his 
fragment of English history has not hesitated to express the 
same sentiments. (3) Nor will he be unwilling, but most 
thankful, to find sufficient grounds for believing, that not 
only at the beginning of the Gospel, but in ages long after- 
wards, believing prayer has received extraordinary answers, 
that it has been heard even in more than it mio-ht have dared 
to ask for. Yet again, if the gift of faith — the gift as distin- 
guished from the grace — of the faith which removes moun- 
tains, has been given to any in later times in remarkable 
measure, the mighty works which such faith may have 
wrought cannot be incredible in themselves to those who re- 
member our Lord's promise ; and if it appears from satisfac- 
tory evidence that they were wrought actually, we shall be- 
lieve them, and believe with joy. Only as it is in most cases 
nnpossible to admit the trustworthiness of the evidence, our 
minds must remain at the most in a state of suspense, and I 
do not know why it is necessary to come to any positive de- 
cision. For if we think that supposing the miracle to be 

* Burke. 



LECTURE II. 131 

irue, it gives the seal of God's approbation to all the belief 
of him who performed it, this is manifestly a most hasty and 
untenable inference. The gift of faith does not imply the 
gift of wisdom, nor is every believing Christian, whose prayer 
God may hear in an extraordinary manner, endued also with 
an exemption from error. Men's gifts are infinitely different, 
-distinct from each other, as from God's gifts of inward grace ; 
unequal in value outwardly, the highest, it m.ay be, of less 
value spiritually to its possessor than the humblest grace of 
him who has no remarkable gift at all. Yet the grace can- 
not do the work of the gift, nor the higher gift the work of 
the meaner ; nor may he who can work miracles claim there- 
fore the gift of understanding the Scripture, and interpreting 
it with infallible truth. Cyprian said of the martyrs, when 
he thought that they were impairing; the discipline of the 
church by granting tickets of communion over hastily to the 
Lapsi, or those who had fallen away in the persecutions, 
" The martyrs do not make the Gospel, for it is through the 
Gospel that they acquire the glory of martyrdom.'^* And so 
we might say of certain miracles, if there were any such, 
wrought by persons who had in many points grievously cor- 
rupted the Christian faith, " Miracles must not be allowed to 
overrule the Gospel ; for it is only through our belief in the 
Gospel that we accord our belief to them." (4) 

I do not make any apology for the length of this discussion, 
because the subject was one which lay directly in our way, 
and could not be passed over hastily ; and I am never averse 
to showing how closely connected are those studies which 
we will attempt to divide by the names religious and secular, 
mjuring both by trying to separate them. Let us now pro- 
ceed with our review of the difficulties of history, and still 
confining ourselves to what I have called the simpler period^ 

* Cyprian Epist. xxvii. " Minime consideravit quod non martyres Evaii- 
gelium faciant, sed per Evangelium martyres fiaiit." 



132 LECTURE II. 

we will pass on however from the eighth to the thirteenth 
century, and briefly notice some of the questions vv'hich sug- 
gest themselves when we read Matthew Paris, or, still more, 
any of the French, German, or Italian historians of the same 
period. 

The thirteenth century contains in it at its beginning the 
most splendid period of the papacy, the time of Innocent the 
Third ; its end coincides with that great struggle between 
Boniface the Eighth and Philip the Fair, which marks the 
first stage of its decline. It contains the reign of Frederick 
the Second, and his long contests with the popes in Italy ; 
the foundation of the orders of friars, Dominican and Fran- 
ciscan ; the last period of the crusades, and the age of the 
greatest glory of the schoolmen. Thus full of matters of interest 
as it is, it will yet be found that all its interest is more or less 
connected with two great questions concerning the church ; 
namely, the power of the priesthood in matters of government 
and in matters of faith ; the merits of the contest between the 
papacy and the kings of Europe ; the nature and character 
of that influence over men's minds which affected the whole 
philosophy of the period, the whole intellectual condition of 
the Christian world. 

It would be out of place here altogether to enter at large 
into either o^ these questions. But it is closely connected 
with my subject, to notice one or two points as to the method 
of studying them. I observed in my first lecture, that after 
studying the history of any period in its own contemporary 
writers, it was desirable also to study the view of it enter- 
tained by a later period, as whether more or less true, it was 
sure to be diflferent, and would probably afford some truth in 
which the contemporary view was deficient. This holds 
good with the thirteenth century as with other periods ; it is 
quite important that we should see it as it appears in the eyes 
of later times, no less than as it appears in its own. But the 



LECTURE II. 133 

questions of the thirteenth century, if I am right in saying 
tliat they are connected with the church, require especially 
that our view should be cast backwards as well as forwards ; 
we should regard them not only as they appear to later times, 
but to a time far earlier ; the merits or demerits of the papacy 
must be tried with reference to the original system of Chris- 
tianity, not as exhibited only in what is called the early 
church, but much more as exhibited in Scripture. Is the 
church system of Innocent the Third, either in faith or in 
government, the system of the New Testament 1 That the 
two differ widely is certain ; but is one the developement of 
the other ? Is the spirit of both the same, with no other 
alteration than one merely external, such as must be found 
in passing from the infancy of the church to its maturity ? 
Or is the spirit altogether different, so that the later system 
is not the developement of the earlier, but its perversion ? 
And then follows the inquiry, intensely interesting to those 
who are able to pursue it, what is the history of this perver- 
sion, and how far is it unlike merely, without being corrupted 
from, the Gospel ; for the perversion may not extend through 
every part of it ; there may be in it differences from the 
original system which are merely external ; there may be in 
it, even where superficially considered it is at variance v^rith 
the scriptural system, there may be in it developement merely 
in some instances while there is perversion in others. Only 
it is essential that we do not look at the first century through 
the medium of the thirteenth, nor through the medium of any 
earlier century : the judge's words must not be taken accord- 
ing to the advocate's sense of them : the tirst century is to 
determine our judgment of the second, and of all subsequent 
centuries ; it will not do to assume that the judgment must 
be interpreted by the very practices and opinions the merits 
of which it has to try. 

We may, however, choose rather to look at the outside of 



134 LECTURE II. 

the middle ages than penetrate to the deeper principles which 
are involved in their contests and their condition. We may 
study the chroniclers rather, who paint the visible face of 
things with exceeding liveliness, however little they may be 
able or may choose lo descend to what lies within. And as 
a specimen of these we may take one of the latest of their 
number, the celebrated Philip de Comines. 

Philip de Comines came from the small town of that name 
near Lisle in Flanders, and was thus born a subject of the 
dukes of Burgundy, in the reign of Duke Philip the Good, in 
the year 1445. He served Duke Philip, a*nd his sOn Duke 
Charles the Bold, but left the latter and went over to the 
service of Louis the Eleventh in 1472, by whom he was em- 
ployed in his most important and confidential affairs. He 
was present with Louis during the last scenes of his life at 
Plessis les Tours; he lived through the reign of Charles the 
Eighth with great varieties of fortune, being at one time shut 
up in prison, and at another employed in honourable and im- 
portant duties, and he died in the reign of Louis the Twelfth. 
His Memoirs embrace a period of thirty-four years, from 
1464, when he first entered into the service of Duke Charles 
of Burgundy, then Count of Charolois, to the death of King 
Charles the Eighth in 1498. Thus they are not only a con- 
temporary history, but relate mostly to transactions which 
the writer actually witnessed, or in which he was more or 
less concerned. 

Philip de Comines has been called the father of modern 
history, a title which would class him with the writers of the 
second, or what I have called the more complicated period. 
But it seems to me that he belongs entirely to the simpler 
period ; and this is most apparent when we compare him 
with Machiavelli, who, although almost his contemporary, 
yet does in his whole style, and in the tone of his mind, 
really belong to the later period. Thus in Philip de Cominea 



LECTURE II. 135 

we meet with scarcely any thing of the great political ques- 
tions which arose in the next century ; his Memoirs paint 
the wars and intrigues carried on by one prince against 
another for the mere purpose of enlarging his dominions; 
and, except in the revolts of Liege against the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, we see no symptoms of any thing like a war of opin- 
ion. We get then only a view of the external appearance 
of things ; and meet with no other difficulties than such as 
arise from a want of sufficient circumstantial knowledge to 
enable us to realize his pictures fully. 

And here I cannot but congratulate ourselves in this place 
on those habits of careful sifting and analysis which we 
either have, or ought to have gained, from our classical 
studies. Take any large work of a classical historian, and 
with what niceness of attention have we been accustomed to 
read it. How many books have we consulted in illustration 
of its grammatical difficulties, how have we studied our maps 
to become familiar with its geography ; what various aids 
have we employed to throw light on its historical allusions, 
on every office or institution casually named ; on all points 
of military detail, the divisions of the army, the form of the 
camp, the nature of the weapons and engines used in battles 
or in sieges ; or on all matters of private life, points of law, 
of domestic economy, of general usages and manners. In 
this way we penetrate an ancient history by a thousand pas- 
sages, we explore every thing contained in it ; if some points 
remain obscure, they stand apart from the rest for that very 
reason distinctly remembered, the very page in which they 
occur is familiar to us. We are already trained, therefore, 
in the process of studying history thoroughly ; and we have 
only to repeat for Philip de Comines, or any other writer on 
whom we may have fixed our choice, the very same method 
which we have been accustomed to employ with Herodotus 
«.nd Thucydides. 



i3G LECTURE II. 

At the same time it is fair to add, that this process with a 
modern historian is accidentally much more difficult. For 
the ancient writers we have our helps ready at hand, well- 
known, cheap, and accessible. The school-boy has his 
Ainsworth or his Donnegan ; he has his small atlas of 
ancient maps, his compendium of Greek or Roman anti- 
quities, his abridgments of Greek and Roman history. The 
more advanced student has his Facciolati, his Schneider, 
or his Passow ; his more elaborate atlas, his fuller his- 
tories, his vast collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, 
to which all the Jearning of Europe has contributed its aid. 
How different is the case with the history of the middle 
ages ! If there are any cheap or compendious helps for the 
study of them, I must profess my ignorance of them. There 
may be many, known on the Continent if not in England, but 
I am unable to mention them. For the Latin of the middle 
ages, I know of nothing in a smaller form than Adelung's 
abridged edition of Ducange ; yet this abridgment consists 
of six thick octavos. (5) Maps accommodated to the geog- 
raphy of the middle ages, and generally accessible, there are 
I think, at least in England, none.* We have nothing, I 
think, for the history of the middle ages answering in fulness 
and convenience to that book so well known to us all, Lem- 
priere's Classical Dictionary. For antiquities, laws, man- 
ners, customs, &c., many large and valuable works might 
be named, — many sources of information scattered about in 
different places ; let me name several excellent papers by 
Lancelot, St. Palaye, and others, occurring in the volumes 
of the Memoirs of the French Academy, — but a cheap popu- 
lar compendium like our old acquaintances Adam and Pot- 
ter, or the more improved works which are now superseding 
them, does not, I believe, exist. My object in stating this is 

* An atlas of this kind, however, exhibiting the several countries of EiiTor« 
ftt successive periods, is now in the course of publication in Germany. 



LECTURE II. 137 

twofold ; first, because to state publicly the want is likely 
perhaps to excite some one or other to make it good ; and 
secondly, to point out again to you how invaluable is the 
time which you are passing in this place, inasmuch as the 
libraries here furnish you with that information in abun- 
dance which to any one settled in the country is in ordinary 
oases inaccessible. 

But to return to Philip de Comines. We find well exem 
plified in him one of the peculiarities of modern history, aa 
distinguished from that of Greece ana Rome, .he jmportance 
namely of attending to genealogies. Many of the wars of 
modern Europe have been succession wars ; questions of 
disputed inheritance, where either competitor claimed to be 
the legal heir of the last undoubted possessor of the crown. 
Of such a nature were the great French wars in Italy in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of which Comines witnessed 
and has recorded the beginning. And this same thing shows 
us also how impossible it is to study any age by itself, how 
necessarily our inquiries run back into previous centuries, 
how instinctively we look forward to the results in a suc- 
ceeding period of what we are now studying in its origin. 
For instance, Comines records the marriage of Mary duchess 
of Burgundy, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold, 
with Maximilian archduke of Austria. This marriage, con- 
veying all the dominions of Burgundy to Maximilian and his 
heirs, established a great independent sovereign on the fron- 
tiers of France, giving to him on the north, not only the 
present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, but large portions 
of what is now French territory, the old provinces of Artoise 
and French Flanders, French Hainault and French Luxem- 
bourg : while on the east it gave him Franche Comte, thus 
yielding him a footing within the Jura, on the very banks 
of the Saone. Thence ensued, in after ages, when the Span- 
ish branch of the house of Austria had inherited this part of 



138 LECTURE II. 

its dominions, the long contests which deluged the Nether- 
lands with blood, the campaigns of King William and Lux- 
embourg, the nine years of efforts no less skilful than val. 
iant, in which Marlborough broke his way through the 
fortresses of the iron frontier. Again, when Spain became 
in a manner French by the accession of the house of Bour^ 
bon, the Netherlands reverted once more to Austria itself; 
and from thence the powers of Europe advanced almost in 
our own days to assail France as a republic ; and on this 
ground, on the plains of Fleurus, was won the first of those 
great victories which for nearly twenty years carried the 
French standards triumphantly over Europe. Thus the 
marriage recorded by Comines has been working busily 
down to our very own times : it is only since the settlement 
of 1814, and that more recent one of 1830, that the Nether- 
lands have ceased to be affected by the union of Charles the 
Bold's dauo-hter with Maximilian of Austria. 

Again, Comines records the expedition of Charles the 
Eighth of France into Italy to claim the crown of Naples. 
He found the throne filled by a prince of the house of Ara- 
gon. A Frenchman and a Spaniard contend for the inheri- 
tance of the most southern kingdom of Italy. We are obliged 
to unroll somewhat more of the scroll of time than the part 
which was at first lying open before us, in order to make this 
part intelligible. The French king represented the house of 
Anjou, the elder branch of which, more than two centuries 
earlier, had been invited by the pope into Italy to uphold the 
Guelf or papal cause against the Ghibelines or party of the 
emperors ; headed as it was by Manfred king of Naples, son 
of the Swabian emperor of the house of Hohenstaufen, Fred- 
erick the Second. And thus we open upon the rich story 
of the contests in Italy in the thirteenth century, the conquer- 
mg marcn of Charles of Anjou, the unworthy brother of the 
noblest and holiest of monarchs Louis the Ninth ; (6) the 



LECTURE II. 139 

battle of Benevento ; the sad history of the young Conradin, 
Manfred's nephew — his defeat at Scurgola under the old 
walls of the Marsian and Pelasgian Alba, his cruel execu- 
tion, the transferring of his claims to Peter of Aragon, who 
had married his cousin Constance, Manfred's daughter, the 
tragedy of the Sicilian vespers, and the enthroning of the 
Aragoneze monarch in Sicily. All these earlier events, 
and the extinction subsequently of the elder branch of the 
house of Anjou; the crimes and misfortunes of queen Joanna, 
her adoption of the younger branch of the house of Anjou, 
and the counter adoption of a prince of the house of Aragon 
by queen Joanna the Second, the new contest between the 
French and Spanish princes, and the triumph of the latter in 
1442, fall naturally under our view, in order to explain the 
expedition of Charles the Eighth. I say nothing of inquiries 
less closely connected with our main subject, inquiries sug- 
gested by the events of the Italian expedition ; the state of 
Florence after the unsubstantial lustre of Lorenzo di Medici's 
government had passed away ; the state of the papacy when 
Alexander the Sixth could be elected to fill the papal chair. 
But in the more direct inquiries needed to illustrate the con- 
test in Naples itself, we see how wide a field must be ex- 
plored of earlier times, in order to understand the passing 
events of modern history. 

The Memoirs of Philip de Comines terminate about twenty 
years before the reformation, six years after the first voyage 
of Columbus. They relate then to a tranquil period immedi- 
ately preceding a period of extraordinary movement ; to the 
last stage of an old state of things, now on the point of passing 
away. Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurri- 
cane, the almost oppressive stillness which announces the 
eruption, or, to use Campbell's beautiful image — 

" The torrent's smoothness ere it dash beioWi" 



14:0 LECTURE TI. 

are always, 1 Inink, full of a very deep interest. But it is 
not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow, 
nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their 
dissolution is fast approaching — the interest has yet another 
source ; our knowledge namely, that in that tranquil period 
lay the germs of the great changes following, taking their 
shape for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while 
all wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by 
experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber, we wish in 
vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its 
condition, and taught the iufinite preciousness of the passing 
hour. And as when a man has been cut off by sudden death, 
we are curious to know whether his previous words or be- 
haviour indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine 
the records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to ob- 
serve whether in any point there may be discerned an anti- 
cipation of the great future, or whether all was blindness and 
insensibility. In this respect Comines' Memoirs are striking 
from their perfect unconsciousness : the knell of the middle 
ages had been already sounded, yet Comines has no other 
notions than such as they had tended to foster ; he describes 
their events, their characters, their relations, as if they were 
to continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the 
simplest form of human affairs gives birth to ; he laments 
the instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common 
mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between 
Solon and Crcesus, when the philosopher assured the king 
that to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But resem- 
bling Herodotus in his simple morality, (7) he is utterly un- 
like him in another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely 
and honestly of all men without respect of persons, Philip de 
Comi: les praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the 
best of princes, although he v^itnessed not only the crimes of 
his life, but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter 



LECTUUE II. 141 

end, and lias even faithfully recorded them. In this respect 
Philip de Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with 
whom the crimes committed by his knights and great lords 
never interfere with his general eulogies of them : the habit 
of deference and respect was too strong to be broken, and the 
facts which he himself relates to their discredit, appear to 
have produced on his mind no impression. 

It is not then in Philip de Comines, nor in the other histo- 
rians of the earlier period of modern history, that we find the 
greatest historical questions presenting themselves. If we 
attempt to ascend to these, we must seek them by ourselves ; 
the historians themselves do not naturally lead us to them. 
But we must now proceed to the second or more complicated 
period, and we must see to what kind of inquiries the histories 
of this period immediately introduce us, and what is neces- 
sary to enable us fully to understand the scenes which they 
present to us. And on this subject I hope to enter in my 
next U'oi^i.ce. 



NOTES 



TO 



LECTURE II. 



Note 1. — Page 124. 



The importance to the cause of education, of right theory and 
practice of translation., which induced Dr. Arnold to speak of it 
though only slightly connected with the subject of his lecture, leads 
me to follow it somewhat farther. The note which I wish to add 
to his remarks will be found in Appendix III. of this volume 

Note 2.— Page 127. 

In the Preface to the History of Rome, (p. x.,) Dr. Arnold 
speaks of Niebuhr's " master art of doubting rightly, and believing 
rightly." 

Note 3.— Page 130. 

Speaking of the pagan condition of the Anglo-Saxons and theii 
conversion to Christianity, Mr. Burke writes — " The introduction 
of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such 
inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in 
these rude and fierce manners. 

" It is by no means impossible, that, for an end so worthy. Provi- 
dence, on some occasions, might directly have interposed. The 
books which contain the history of this time and change, are little 
else than a narrative of miracles ; frequently, however, with such 
apparent marks of weakness or design, that they afford little en- 
couragement to insist on them. They were received with a blind 



NOTES TO LECTURE II. ]43 

credulity ; they have been since rejected with as undisting'uishing 
a disregard. But as it is not in my design nor inclination, nor in- 
deed in my power, either to establish or refute these stories, it is 
sufficient to observe, that the reality or opinion of such miracles 
was the principal cause of the early acceptance and rapid progress 
of Christianity in this island." 

Essay on English History ^ book ii. eh. 1. 

Note 4. — Page 131. 

" The clearest notion which can be given ot rationalism would, 
I think, be this ; that it is the abuse of the understanding in 
subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are inter- 
mingled. Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine 
things it cannot ; and thus, where the two are mixed together, its 
inability to judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions 
of both, and the judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, 
the understanding examines a miraculous history : it judges truly 
of what I may call the human part of the case ; that is to say, of 
the rarity of miracles, of the fallibility of human testimony, of the 
proneness of most minds to exaggeration, and of the critical argu- 
ments affecting the genuineness or the date of the narrative itself. 
But it forgets the divine part, namely, the power and providence of 
God, that he is really ever present amongst us, and that the spiritual 
world, which exists invisibly all around us, may conceivably, and 
by no means impossibly exist, at some times and to some persons, 
even visibly." 

Arnold's Sermons, vol. iv., " Christian Life, its Course, etc.," 

note, p. 465. 

* * * " I neither affirm nor deny any thing as to the question 
how often in the history of the Church, or in what periods of it, 
God may have been pleased to suspend the operations of interme- 
diate agents, for the purpose of showing that He is at all times the 
Author and Mover of them. This question must be determined by 
a careful study of historical evidence ; upon the result of such a 
study I should be very sorry to dogmatize. Those who believe 
that miracles are for the assertion of order, and not for the viola- 
tion of it, for the sake of proving the constant presence of a spiri- 



144 NOTES 

tual power, and not for the sake of showing that it interferes 
occasionally with the affairs of the world, will be the least inclined 
to expect the frequent repetitions of such signs, for they hold, that 
being recorded as facts in the former ages of the world, they be- 
come laws in ours, that we are to own Him, who healed the sick 
of the palsy, in every cure which is wrought by the ordinary phy- 
sician, Him who stilled the storm on the Lake of Gennesareth, in 
the guidance and preservation of every ship which crosses the ocean 
— and that this effect would be lost, if we were led to put any con- 
tempt upon that which is daily and habitual. Still, I should think it 
very presumptuous to say, that it has never been needful, in the 
modern history of the world, to break the idols of sense and expe- 
rience by the same method which was sanctioned in the days of old. 
Far less should I be inclined to underrate the piety, and criticize 
the wisdom and honesty of those men, who, missing or overlooking 
intermediate powers, of which they knew little, at once referred 
the acts and events they witnessed to their primary source." 

Maurice's ' Kingdom of Christ,'' Part II., chap, iv., sect 6 

Note 5.— Page 136. 

" A good glossary to the schoolmen would be an interesting and 
instructive work ; a glossary collecting all the words which they 
coined, pointing out the changes they made in the signification of 
old Latin words, explaining the ground of these innovations, and 
the wants they were meant to supply, and tracking all these words 
through the various languages of modern Europe. Valuable as 
Ducange's great work is for political, legal, ecclesiastical, military, 
and all manner of technical words, we still want a similar, though 
a far less bulky and laborious collection of such words as his plan 
did not embrace, especially of philosophical, scientific, and medical 
words, before we can be thoroughly acquainted with the alterations 
which Latin underwent, when, from being the language of Rome, 
It became that of all persons of education throughout Europe. 
Even from Ducange it would be well if some industrious gram- 
marian would pick out all such words as have left any offspring 
amongst us. Then alone shall we be prepared for understanding 
the history of the English language, when its various elements 



TO LECTURE II 145 

3iave be 3 a carefully separated, collected, arranged, and classi- 

lied." 

* Guesses at Truths* p. 140. 

Note 6. — Page 138. 

" No direct instruction could leave on their (the pupils at Rugby) 
minds a livelier image of his (Dr. Arnold's) disgust at moral evil, 
than the black cloud of indignation which passed over his face 
when speaking of the crimes of Napoleon or of Caesar, and the 
dead pause which followed, as if the acts had just been committed 
in his very presence. No expression of his reverence for a high 
standard of Christian excellence could have been more striking 
than the almost involuntary expressions of admiration which broke 
from him whenever mention was made of St. Louis of France." 

• Life, chap, iii. 

Note 7.— Page 140, 

It is perhaps partly for the pleasure of quoting from a work 
abounding in beautiful and wise criticism — one of the most valuable 
contributions that has been made to critical literature — a model of 
what Christian imaginative criticism should be — that I select Mr. 
Keble's words respecting the ' simple morality' of Herodotus. 

* * " Habemus Herodotum, habemus Platonem : quorum alter 

Homerum refert non lingua tantum lonica, et simplicitate ilia 

(Jp%aiorp(57r(f), sed et universo genere narrandi, et maxime omnium 

propter quasdam sententias, de vita caduca, rerumque mortalium 

segritudine, quas ille mira dulcedine narrationibus suis intertexi 

curavit." * * 

Kebue : Proilectiones, i. 273. 

* * * " If I were called upon to name what spirit of evil pre- 
dominantly deserved the name of Antichrist, I should name the 
spirit of chivalry* — the more detestable for the very guise of the 

* " Chivalry," or (as Dr. Arnold used more frequently to call the element in the 
middle ages which he thus condemned) " feudality, is especially Keltic and barbarian 
—incompatible with the highest virtue of which man is capable, and the last at which 
he arrives — a sense of justice. It sets up the personal allegiance to the chief above 
illegiance to God and law." 

1.3 



146 NOTES TO LECTURE II. 

' Archangel ruined,' which has made it so seductive to the mosl 
generous spiiits — but to me so hateful, because it is in direct oppo- 
sition to the impartial justice of the Gospel, and its comprehensive 
feeling of equal brotherhood, and because it so fostered a sense of 
honour rather than a sense of duty." 

Life and Correspondencey chap, v., letter 4. 

* * * " One relation alone, beyond those of blood, seems to have 
been acknowledged," (in Cisalpine Gaul in the 3d century, a. c. ;) 
" the same which, introduced into Europe six hundred years after- 
wards by the victories of the German barbarians, has deeply tainted 
modern society down to this hour ; the relation of chief and fol- 
lowers, or, as it was called in its subsequent form, lord and vassals. 
The head of a family distinguished for his strength and courage 
gathered around him a numerous train of followers from other fam- 
ilies ; and they formed his clan, or band, or followers, bound to him 
for life and death, bestowing on him those feelings of devoted at- 
tachment, which can be safely entertained only towards the com- 
monwealth and its laws, and rendering him that blind obedience 
which is wickedness when paid to any less than God. This evil 
and degrading bond is well described by the Greek and Roman 
writers, by words expressive of unlawful and anti-social combina- 
tions, (' Factio,' Cassar, de Bell. Gallic, vi. 11; iraipsia, Polybius, 
ii. 17 :) it is the same which in other times and countries has ap- 
peared in the shape of sworn brotherhoods, factions, parties, sects, 
clubs, secret societies, and unions, everywhere and in every form 
the M'orst enemy both of individual and of social excellence, as it 
substitutes other objects in place of those to which as men and citi- 
Eens we ought only to be bound, namely, God and Law." 

Hist, of Rome i vol. in note, p 47G 



LECTURE III. 



It is my hope, if I am allowed to resume these lectures 
next year, to enter fully into the history of* some one charac- 
teristic period of the middle ages, to point out as well as I 
can the sources of information respecting it, and to paint it, 
and enable you to judge of its nature both absolutely and 
relatively to us. But for the present, I must turn to that 
period which is properly to be called modern history, the 
modern of the modern, the complicated period as I have call- 
ed it, in contradistinction to the simpler period which preceded 
it. And here too, if life and health be spared me, I hope 
hereafter to enter into minute details ; selecting some one 
country as the principal subject of our inquiries, and illus- 
trating the lessons of history for the most part from its par- 
ticular experience. Now, however, I must content myself 
with more general notices : I must remember that I am 
endeavouring to assist the student of modern history, by sug- 
gesting to him the best method of studying it, and pointing 
out the principal difficulties which will impede his progress. 
I must not suppose the student to be working only at the his- 
tory of one country, or one age : the points of interest in the 
three last centuries are so numerous that our researches may 
be carried on far apart from each other, and I must endeavour, 
so far as my knowledge will permit, to render these lectures 
serviceable generally. 

Now in the first place, when we enter upon modern history, 
?ur work, limit it as we will, unavoidably grows in magni* 



148 LECTURE III. 

:ude. Allowing that we are not so extravagant as to aim al 
mastering the details of the history of the whole world, that 
we set aside oriental history and colonial history ; that far- 
ther, having now restricted ourselves to Europe, we separate 
the western kingdoms from the northern and eastern, and 
confine our attention principally to our own country and to 
those which have heen most closely connected with it ; yet 
still the limit which we strive to draw round our inquiries 
will be continually broken through, they will and must extend 
themselves beyond it. JSTorthern, eastern, and south-eastern 
Europe, the vast world of European colonies, nay sometimes 
the distinct oriental world itself, will demand our attention : 
there is scarcely a portion of the globe of which we can be suf- 
fered to remain in complete ignorance. Amidst this wide field, 
widening as it were before us at every step, it becomes doubly 
important to gain certain principles of inquiry, lest we should 
be wandering about vaguely like an ignorant man in an ill- 
arranged museum, seeing and wondering at much, but learn- 
in o- nothins^. 

The immense variety of history makes it very possible for 
diflTerent persons to study it with different objects ; and here 
we have an obvious and convenient division. But the great 
object, as I cannot but think, is that which most nearly touches 
the inner life of civilized man, namely, the vicissitudes of 
institutions, social, political, and religious. This, in my 
judgment, is the rsXsjoVarov rsXog of historical inquiry; but 
because of its great and crowning magnitude we will assign to 
it its due place of honour, we will survey the exterior and the 
outer courts of the temple, before we approach the sanctuary. 

In history, as in other things, a knowledge of the external 
is needed before we arrive at that which is within. We want 
to get a sort of frame for our picture ; a set of local habita- 
tions, TO'Tfoi, where our ideas may be arranged, a scene in 
which the struggle of principles is to be fought, and men who 



LECTURE III. 149 

are to fight it. And thus we want to know clearly the geo- 
graphical bounds of different countries, and their external 
revolutions. This leads us in the first instance to geography 
and military history, even if our ultimate object lies bj^yond. 
But being led to them by necessity, we linger in them after- 
,wards from choice ; so much is therd in both of the most 
picturesque and poetical character, so much of beauty, of 
magnificence, and of interest, physical and moral. 

The.student of modern history especially needs a knowledge 
of geography, because, as I have said, his inquiries will lead 
him first or last to every quarter of the globe. But let us 
consider a little what a knowledge of geography is. First, 1 
grant, it is a knowledge of the relative position and distance 
of places from one another : and by places I mean either 
towns, or the habitations of particular tribes or nations ; for 
I think our first notion of a map is that of a plan of the dwell- 
ings of the human race ; we connect it strictly with man, 
and with man's history. And here I believe many persons' 
geography stops : they have an idea of the shape, relative 
position, and distance of different countries ; and of the posi- 
tion, that is, as respects the points of the compass, and mutual 
distance, of the principal towns. Every one for example has 
a notion of the shapes of France and of Italy, that one is 
situated north-west of the other, and that their frontiers join : 
and again, every one knows that Paris is situated in the 
north of France, Bordeaux in the south-west ; that Venice 
lies at the north-east corner of Italy, and Rome nearly in the 
middle as regards north and south, and near to the western 
sea. Thus much of knowledge is indeed indispensable to the 
simplest understanding of history ; and this kind of know- 
ledge, extending over more or less countries as it may be 
and embracing with more or less minuteness the divisions of 
provinces, and the position of the smaller towns, is that which 
passes, I believe, with many for a knowledge of geography. 



150 LECTURE III. 

Yet you will observe, that this knowledge does not touch 
the earth itself, but only the dwellings of men upon the 
earth. It regards the shapes of a certain number of great 
national estates, if I may so call them ; the limits of which, 
like those of individuals' property, have often respect to no 
natural boundaries, but are purely arbitrary. A real know- 
ledge of geography embraces at once a knowledge of the 
earth, and of the dwellings of man upon it; it stretches out 
one hand to history, and the other to geology and physiology : 
it is just that part in the dominion of knowledge where the 
students of physical and of moral science meet together. 

And without denying the usefulness of that plan-like know 
ledge of geography of which I was just now speaking, it can- 
not be doubted that a far deeper knowledge of it is required 
by him who would study history effectively. And the deeper 
knowledge becomes far the easier to remember. For my 
own part I find it extremely difficult to remember the position 
of towns, when I have no other association with them than 
their situation relatively to each other. But let me once 
understand the real geography of a country, its organic 
structure if I may so call it: the form of its skeleton, that is, 
of its hills : the magnitude and course of its veins an^ arteries, 
that is, oMts streams and rivers : let me conceive of it as of 
a whole made up of connected parts ; and then the position 
of man's dwellings, viewed in reference to these parts, be- 
comes at once easily remembered, and lively and intelligible 
besides. 

1 said that geography held out one hand to geology and 
physiology, while she held out the other to history. In fact, 
geology and physiology themselves are closely connected with 
history. For instance, what lies at the bottom of that ques- 
tion which is now being discussed everywhere, the question 
of the corn-laws, but the geological fact that England is more 
richly supplied with coal-mines than any other country m 



LECTURE III. 151 

the world ?* What has given a peculiar interest to our rela- 
tions with China, but the physiological fact, that the tea- 
planl, which is become so necessary to our daily life, has 
been cultivated with equal success in no other climate or 
countiy? What is it which threatens the permanence of 
the union between the northern and southern states of the 
American confederacy, but the physiological fact that the 
soil and climate of the southern states render them essentially 
agricultural ; while those of the northern states, combined 
with their geographical advantages as to sea-pcrts, dispose 
them no less naturally to be manufacturing and commercial ? 
The whole character of a nation may be influenced by its 
geology and physical geography. 



* The importance of our coal-mines is so great, that I tliink it a duty to 
reprint here a note of Dr. Buckland's, which is to be found in p. 41 of his 
" Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society of 
London, 19th of February, 1841." What Dr. Buckland says on such a subject 
is of^the very highest authority ; and should be circulated as widely as possible. 

*' As no more coal is in process of formation, and our national prosperity must 
inevitably terminate with the exhaustion of those precious stores of mineral 
fuel, which fonn the foundation of oxxi greatest manufacturing and commer- 
cial establishments, I feel it my duty to entreat the attention of the legislature 
to two svil practices which are tending to accelerate the period when the con- 
tents oi" our coal-mines will have been consumed. The first of these is the 
wanton waste which for more than fifty years has been committed by the 
coal-owners near Newcastle, by screening and burning annually in never- 
extinguished ^er?/ heaps at the pits' mouth, more th2in one million of chaldrons 
of excellent small coal, being nearly one third of the entire produce of the best 
coal-mines in England. This criminal destruction of the elements of our 
national industry, which is accelerating by one third the not very distant 
period when these mines will be exhausted, is perpetrated by the colliers, for 
the purpose of selling the remaining two-thirds at a greater profit than they 
would derive from the sale of the entire bulk unscreened to the coal-merchant. 

" The second evil is the exportation of coal to foreign countries, in some of 
which it is employed to work the machinery of rival manufactories, that in 
certain cases could scarcely be maintained without a supply of British coals. 
In 1839, 1,431,8(31 tons were exported, and in 1840, 1,592,283 tons, of which 
nearly one fourth were sent to France. An increased duty on coals exported 
to any country, excepting our own colonies, might afford a remedy. See note 

2. Iliis subject in my Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. p. 535," 



152 LECTURE III. 

But for the sake of its mere beauty and liveliness, if there 
were no other consideration, it would be worth our while to 
acquire this richer view of geography. Conceive only the 
difference between a ground-plan and a picture. The mere 
plan-geography of Italy gives us its shape, as I have ob- 
served, and the position of its towns ; to these it may add a 
semicircle of mountains round the northern boundary, to re- 
present the Alps ; and another long line stretching down the 
middle of the country, to represent the Apennines. But let 
us carry on this a little farther, and give life, and meaning, 
and harmony to what is at present at once lifeless and con- 
fused. Observe in the first place, how the Apennine line, 
beginning from the southern extremity of the Alps, runs 
across Italy to the very edge of the Adriatic, and thus sepa- 
rates naturally the Italy proper of the Romans from Cisalpine 
Gaul. Observe again, how the Alps, after running north 
and south where they divide Italy from France, turn then 
away to the eastward, running almost parallel to the Apen- 
nines, till they too touch the head of the Adriatic, on the 
confines of Istria. Thus between these two lines of moun- 
tains there is enclosed one great basin or plain ; enclosed on 
three sides by mountains, open only on the east to the sea. 
Observe how widely it spreads itself out, and then see how 
well it is watered. One great river flows through it in its 
whole extent ; and this is fed by streams almost unnumbered, 
descending towards it on either side, from the Alps on one 
side, and from the Apennines on the other. Who can wonder 
that this large, and rich, and well-watered plain should be 
filled with flourishing cities, or that it should have been' con- 
tended for so often by successive invadei's ? Then descend- 
ing into Italy proper, we find the complexity of its geography 
quite in accordance with its manifold political divisions. Il 
is not one simple central ridge of mountains, leaving a broad 
belt of level country on either side between it and the sea ; 



LECTURE III 153 

nor yet is il a chain rising immediately from the sea on one 
side, like the Andes in South America, and leaving room 
therefore on the other side for wide plains of table-land, and 
for rivers with a sufficient length of course to become at last 
great and navigable. It is a back-bone thickly set with 
spines of unequal length, some of them running out at regu- 
lar distances parallel to each other, but others twisted so 
strangely that they often run for a long way parallel to the 
back-bone, or main ridge, and interlace with one another in 
a maze almost inextricable. And as if to complete the dis- 
order, in those spots where the spines of the Apennines, being 
twisted round, run parallel to the sea and to their own cen- 
tral chain, and thus leave an interval of plain between their 
bases and the Mediterranean, volcanic agency has broken up 
the space thus left with other and distinct groups of hills of 
its own creation, as in the case of Vesuvius and of the Alban 
hills near Rome. Speaking generally then, Italy is made 
up of an infinite multitude of valleys pent in between high 
and steep hills, each forming a country to itself, and cut off 
by natural barriers from the others. Its several parts are 
isolated by nature, and no art of man can thoroughly unite 
them. Even the various provinces of the same kingdom are 
strangers to each other ; the Abruzzi are like an unknown 
world to the inhabitants of Naples, insomuch that when two 
Neapolitan naturalists not ten years since made an excursion 
to visit the Majella, one of the highest of the central Apen- 
nines, they found there many medicinal plants growing in 
the greatest profusion, which the Neapolitans were regularly 
in the habit of importing from other countries, as no one sus- 
pected their existence within their own kingdom. Hence 
arises the romantic character of Italian scenery; the constant 
combination of a mountain outline, and all the wild features 
of a mountain country, with the rich vegetation of a southern 
climate in the valleys : hence too the rudeness, the pastoral 



154 LECTURE III. 

simplicity, and the occasional robber habits, to be found in 
the population ; so that to this day you may travel in many 
places for miles together in the plains and valleys without 
passing through a single town or village : for the towns still 
cluster on the mountain sides, the houses nestling together on 
some scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them and sinking 
down abruptly below them, the very " congesta manu prse- 
ruptis oppida saxis" of Virgil's description, which he even 
then called "antique walls," because they had been the 
strongholds of the primeval inhabitants of the country, and 
which are still inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries, 
nothing of the stir and movement of other parts of Europe 
having penetrated into these lonely valleys, and tempted the 
people to quit their mountain fastnesses for a more accessible 
dwelling in the plain. I have been led on farther than I in- 
tended ; but I wished to give an example of what I meant by 
a real and lively knowledge of geography, which brings the 
whole character of a country before our eyes, and enables 
us to understand its influence upon the social and political 
condition of its inhabitants. And this knowledge, as I said 
before, is very important to enable us to follow clearly the 
external revolutions of different nations, which we want To 
comprehend before we penetrate to what has been passini> 
within. (1) 

^ The undoubted tendency of the last three centuries has 
been to consolidate what were once separate states or kin«:- 

J. o 

doms into one great nation. The Spanish peninsula, which 
in earlier times had contained many distinct states, came to 
consist as at present of two kingdoms only, Spain and Portu- 
gal, in the last ten years of the fifteenth century. Franc? 
about the same period acquired Bretagne and Provence, but 
Its acquisitions of Artois, of Franche Comte, of French Flaii- 
aers, of Lorraine, and of Alsace, have been much later; 
and Avignon and its territory were not acquired till the rev 



LECTURE III. i5r» 

olution. For a century after the beginning of our period, 
Scotland and England were governed by different sover- 
eigns ; for two centuries they remained distinct kingdoms ; 
and the legislative union with Ireland is no older than the 
present century. Looking eastward, how many kingdoms 
and states have been swallowed up in the empire of Austria ; 
}3ohemia, and Hungary : the duchies of Milan and Mantua, 
and the republic of Venice. The growth of Prussia into a 
mighty kingdom, and Russia into the most colossal of em- 
pires, is the work of the last centuiy or of the present. 
Even in Germany and Italy, where smaller states still sub- 
sist, the same law has been in operation ; of all the free im- 
perial cities of Germany four only are left, Frankfort, Ham- 
burg, Bremen, and Lubec ; and not Prussia only, but Bavaria 
has grown into a great kingdom. So it has been iu Italy; 
Venice and Genoa have both been absorbed in our own days 
into the monarchies of Austria and Sardinia ; but the six- 
teenth century, and even the fifteenth had begun this work : 
Venice had extinguished the independence of Padua and 
Verona; Florence had conquered its rival Pisa: and at a 
later period the duchies of Ferrara and Urbino fell under 
the dominion of the popes. This then has been the tendency 
of things generally ; but it has been a tendency by no means 
working unchecked ; on the contrary, wherever it has threat- 
ened to lead to the universal or overbearing dominion of a 
single state, it has been strenuously resisted, and resisted 
with success ; as in the case of Austria and Spain in the six- 
teenth and eai'ly part of the seventeenth centuries, of France 
at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eigh- 
teenth ; of England in some degree after the peace of Paris 
in 1763, and again of France in our own times. These suc- 
cessive excesses of the tendency towards consolidation, and 
the resistance offered to them, afford some of the most ccnve- 



156 LECTXTRE III. 

iiient divisions for the external history of modem Europe, 
and as such I will briefly notice them. 

We have seen that at the end of the fifteenth century, 
France and Spain had already become greatly consolidated 
within themselves ; the former by the acquisition of the 
duchy of Burgundy, of Provence^ and above all of Bre- 
tagne ; the latter by the union of the kingdoms of Castih 
and Leon, and the destruction of the Moorish kingdom of 
Granada. But after the marriage of the heiress of Burgun- 
dy to Maximilian archduke of Austria had united the Neth- 
erlands and Francbe Comte to the Austrian dominions, the 
subsequent marriage of the archduke Philip, Maximilian's 
son, with Joanna daughter and heiress of Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, added to them besides in the beginning of the sixteenth 
century the whole inheritance of the crown of Spain. And 
as the kingdom of Naples had finally fallen into the hands 
of Ferdinand of Aragon, at the termination of the long 
struggle between the Aragoneze line and that of Anjou, 
Naples also was included in this inheritance. So that when 
Charles the Fifth, the archduke Philip's son, succeeded his 
grandfather Maximilian as emperor, in 1519, the mass of his 
dominions seemed to put him in the way of acquiring a 
universal empire. And this Austro-Spanish power is the 
first of those which going beyond the just limits of the law 
of consolidation of states, threatened to alter altogether the 
condition of Europe. 

It was opposed principally by France, kept at bay by 
Francis the First throughout his reign, notwithstanding the 
defeats which he suffered ; humbled by the successful al- 
liance of his successor Henry the Second with the German 
Protestants in 1551, and finally dissolved by the abdication 
of Charles the Fifth, and the consequent division of his em- 
pire, his brother Ferdinand succeeding to his German do- 
minions, whilst his son Philip inherited Spain, Naples, and 



LECTURE III. 157 

the Netherlands. This took place in 1555, the seoonrt year 
of the reign of our queen Mary. 

But though deprived of his father's German dominions. 
yet the inheritance of Philip the Second was still so ample 
that the Spanish power itself overstepped its just bounds, and 
became a new object of alarm to Europe. The conquest of 
Portugal after the death of king Sebastian in Africa had 
given to Philip the whole Spanish peninsula ; to this were 
added the Spanish discoveries and conquests in America, 
with the wealth derived from them ; besides the iiingdom of 
Naples, including the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the 
seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. There was this 
important circumstance in addition, that France, which had 
successfully resisted Charles the Fifth, was now distracted 
by its own religious wars, and in no condition to uphold the 
balance of power abroad. The dominion of Philip the Sec- 
ond was therefore a very reasonable cause of alarm. 

But this too was resisted and dissolved ; principally owing 
to the revolt of the Netherlands, the opposition of Englandj 
and the return of France to her proper place amongst Euro, 
pean powers, when her religious wars were ended by Henry 
the Fourth. Philip lived to see the decline of his powerj 
and the dismemberment of his empire was sanctioned by his 
successor Philip the Third, who virtually resigned his claim 
to the sovereignty of the seven united provinces of the Neth- 
erlands, the newly-formed republic of Holland. This great 
concession, expressed under the form of a truce for twelve 
years, was made in the year 1609, the sixth year of the 
reiffn of our James the First. 

During the reign of Philip the Second, Austria had stood 
aloof from Spain ; but in the reigns of his successors the two 
branches of the Austrian line were drawn more closely lO- 
gether, and their power was exerted for the same object. 
The conquest of the Palatinate by the emperor Ferdinand 



158 LECTURE III. 

the Second, in 1622, again excited general alarm, and resist- 
ance was organized once more against the dangerous powei 
of the house of Austria. France, under Richelieu, was once 
more the principal bond of the union, but the power which 
acted the most prominent part was one which had not hith- 
erto interfered in the general affairs of Europe, the northern 
kingdom of Sweden. Sweden, Holland, and the Protestant 
states of Germany, were leagued agaiust the house of Aus- 
tria under its two heads, the emperor and the king of Spain. 
A-gain the resisting power triumphed ; the Austrian power in 
Grermany was effectually restrained by the peace of West- 
phalia, in 1648 ; Spain saw Portugal again become an in- 
dependent kingdom, and when she ended her quarrel with 
France by the peace of the Pyrenees, in 1659, she retired 
for ever from the foremost place amongst the powers of Eu- 
rope. 

Austria thus curbed, and Spain falling into decline, room 
was left for others to succeed to the highest place in Europe, 
now left vacant, and that place was inmiediately occupied by 
France. Louis the Fourteenth, Henry the Fourth's grand- 
son, began to reign without governors in the year 1661, the 
year after our restoration, and for the next twenty or thirty 
years the French power became more and more formidable. 
Its conquests indeed were not considerable, when compared 
with those of a later period, yet were they in themselves of 
great and enduring importance. French Flanders gave to 
France the fortress of Lisle and the port of Dunkirk. 
Franche Comte extended its frontier to the eastern slope of 
the Jura, and the borders of Switzerland ; Alsace carried il 
over the crest of the Vosges, and established it on the Rhine. 
But the power of France was not to be judged of merely by 
ir^ territorial conquests. Its navy had arisen from nothing 
to the sovereignty of the seas ; its internal resources were 
tiieveloped, the ascendency of its arts, its fashions, and its 



LECTURE III. 159 

literature, was universal. Yet this fourth alarm of univer- 
sal dominion passed away like those which had preceded it. 
And here the resisting power was England, which now for 
tne first time since the reign of Elizabeth, took an active 
part in the afFairs^f Europe. This change was effected by 
the accession of William the Third, the stadtholder of Hol- 
land and the great antagonist of Louis the Fourteenth, to 
the throne of England ; and by the strong national, and reli- 
gious, and political feeling against France which possessed 
the English people. William checked the power of Louis 
the Fourteenth, Marlborough and Eugene overthrew it. 
Oppressed by defeats abroad, and by famine and misery at 
home, Louis was laid at the mercy of his enemies, and was 
only saved by a party revolution in the English ministry. 
But the peace of Utrecht in 1713, although it sanctioned the 
succession of the French prince Philip, grandson of king 
Louis, to the throne of Spain, yet by its other stipulations, 
and still more by the weakness which made France accept 
it, showed sufficiently that all danger of French dominion 
was effectually overpast. (2) 

Then followed a period of nearly ninety years, during 
which the external order of Europe was not materially 
threatened. Had Frederic th6 Second of Prussia possessed 
greater physical resources, his personal qualities and dispo- 
sitions might hav3 made him the most formidable of conquer, 
ors ; but as it was, his extraordinary efforts were essentially 
defensive ; it was his glory at the end of the Seven Years' 
War that Prussia was not overwhelmed, that it had shattered 
the mighty confederacy which had assailed it, and that hav- 
ing ridden out the storm, the fiery trial left it with confirmed 
and proved strength, and protected besides by the shield of 
its glory. (3) England alone, by her great colonial and na- 
val successes in the war of 1755, and by the high preten- 
sions of her naval code, excited during this period the jeal- 



160 LECTURE III. 

ousy of Europe ; and thus not only France and Spain, bu{ 
her old ally Holland, took part against her in the American 
war, and the northern powers showed that their disposition 
was equally unfriendly, by agreeing together in their armed 
neutrality. But in the loss of America, England seemed to 
have paid a sufficient penalty, and the spirit of jealousy and 
hostility against her did not appear to survive the conclusion 
of the peace of Paris in 1783. 

Ten years afterwards there broke out by far the most 
alarming danger of universal dominion, which had ever 
threatened Europe. The most military people in Europe 
became engaged in a war for their very existence. Inva- 
sion on the frontiers, civil war and all imaginable horrors 
raging within, the ordinary relations of life went to wrack, 
and every Frenchman became a soldier. It was a multitude 
numerous as the hosts of Persia, but animated by the cour- 
age and skill and energy of the old Romans. One thing 
alone was wanting, that which Pyrrhus said the Romans 
wanted, to enable them to conquer the world, a general and 
a ruler like himself. There was wanted a master hand to 
restore and maintain peace at home, and to concentrate and 
direct the immense military resources of France against her 
foreign enemies. And such a one appeared in Napoleon. 
Pacifying La Vendee, receiving back the emigrants, restoring 
the church, remodelling the law, personally absolute, yet 
carefully preserving and maintaining all the grea.t points 
which the nation had won at the revolution. Napoleon uni- 
ted in himself not only the power but the whole will of 
France, and that power and v/ill were guided by a genius 
for war such as Europe had never seen since Ccesar. The 
effect was absolutely magical. In November, 1799, he was 
made First Consul ; he found France humbled by defeats, 
his Italian conquests lost, his allies invaded, his own frontier 
tlireatened. He took the field in May, 1800, and in June the 



LECTURE III. 161 

whole fortune of the war was changed, and Austria driven 
out of Lombardy by the victory of Marengo. Still the flood 
of the tide rose higher and higher, and every successive 
wave of its advance swept away a kingdom. Earthly state 
has never reached a prouder pinnacle, than when Napoleon 
in June, 1812, gathered his army at Dresden, that mighty 
host, unequalled in all time, of 450,000, not men merely but 
effective soldiers, and there received the homage of subject 
kings. And now what was the principal adversary of this 
tremendous power ? by whom was it checked, and resisted^ 
and put down ? By none, and by nothing, but the direct and 
manifest interposition of God. I know of no language so 
well fitted to describe that victorious advance to Moscow, 
and the utter humiliation of the retreat, as the language of 
the prophet with respect to the advance and subsequent de- 
struction of the host of Sennacherib. " When they arose 
early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses," 
applies almost literally to that memorable night of frost in 
which twenty thousand horses perished, and the strength of 
the French army was utterly broken. Human instruments 
no doubt were employed in the remainder of the work, nor 
would I deny to Germany and to Prussia the glories of that 
great year 1813, qor to England the honour of her victories 
m Spain, or of the crowning victory of Waterloo. But at 
the distance of thirty years, those who lived in the time of 
danger, and remember its magnitude, and now calmly re- 
view what there was in human strength to avert it, must ac. 
knowledge, I think, beyond all controversy, that the deliver- 
ance of Europe from the dominion of Napoleon was effected 
neither by Russia, nor by Germany, nor by England, but by 
the hand of God alone. (4) 

What I have now been noticing wih afford one division 
which may be convenient for the student of modern history ; 
one division, out of many which might be made, and purely 



162 LECTURE III. 

an external one. But for this purpose it may be useful, just 
as we sometimes divide Grecian history into the periods of 
the Lacedaemonian, the Athenian, the Theban, and the Mace- 
donian ascendency. It shows us how the centre of external 
movement has varied, round what point the hopes and fears 
of Europe have been successively busy, so far as concerns 
external dominion. You will observe, however, how strictly 
I have confined myself to the outward and merely territorial 
struggle ; how entirely 1 have omitted all those other and 
deeper points which are in connection with the principles of 
internal life. I have regarded Austria, Spain, and France 
purely in one and the same light ; that is, as national bodies 
occupying a certain space on the map of Europe, and en- 
deavoring to spread themselves beyond this space, and so 
deranging the position of those other national bodies which 
existed in their neighbourhood. You know that this is a very 
imperfect representation of the great contests of Europe. 
You know that Austria and Spain in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries were not merely two nations governed by 
the same sovereign, or by sovereigns closely allied together, 
and which sought their own aggrandizement at the expense 
of their neighbours. They were a great deal more than 
this ; they were the representatives, not pui;ely but in a great 
measure, of certain political and religious principles ; and 
the triumph of these principles was involved in their territo- 
rial conquests. So again, the resistance to them was in part 
also the resistance of the opposite principles ; in part, but by 
no means purely. It is worth our while to observe this, as 
one instance out of thousands^ how little any real history is 
an exact exemplification of abstract principles ; how our 
generalizations — which must indeed be made, for so alone 
can history furnish us with any truths — must yet be kept 
within certain limits, or they become full of error. Thus, 
for instance, it is quite true to say that the struggle against 



LECTURE III. 163 

Austria and Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
was not a mere resistance against territorial aggression : 
there were principles involved in the contest. Yet all con- 
cerned in this resistance did not feel it to be a contest of 
principle : France under Francis the First and Henry the 
Second, and again under Henry the Fourth, and lastly under 
Louis the Thirteenth, or rather under Richelieu, was most 
deeply engaged in the resistance to Austria and Spain ; yet 
certainly the French government at no one time was con- 
tending either for Christian truth or for civil freedom. With 
France it was a purely territorial and external contest ; and 
this was well shown by the conduct of Francis the First, 
who burnt French protestants at Paris, while he was allying 
himself with the protestants of Germany ; who opposed, ac- 
cidentally indeed, the papal power and cause, but who did 
not scruple to form a league with the Turks. So again, in 
the Thirty Years' War, that very Richelieu who mainly 
contributed to the establishment of protestantism in Germany 
on a perfectly equal footing by the treaty of Westphalia, was 
the very man who threw his mole across the harbour of 
Rochelle, and conquered the great stronghold of protestantism 
in France. 

These external movements, then, as we have now been 
contemplating them, involve no questions of political or re- 
ligious principle. We may conceive of them as of a mere 
game of chess, where the pieces and pawns on both sides 
differ from each other only in being played from a different 
part of the board. What we have to consider in these con- 
tests are mostly economical questions and military : the purse 
and the sword were the powers which decided them. But is 
the study of such questions indifferent to us ? That surely 
it were most unwise to imagine. For in the first place, 
.hese very contests which we are now regarding as purely 
external, were really as we have seen contests of principle 



164 LECTURE III. 

also ; and thus the economical and military skill which de- 
termined their issue, were in fact the means by which cer, 
tain principles were attacked or defended. Besides, economy 
and military virtues are the great supports of national exist- 
ence, as food and exercise support our individual bodies. I 
grant that the existence so supported may be worthless, may 
be sinful : yet self-preservation is an essential condition of 
all virtue ; in order to do their duty both states and individ- 
uals must first live and be kept alive. But more than all 
this, economical and military questions are not purely exter- 
nal ; they are connected closely with moral good and evil ; 
a faulty political economy is the fruitful parent of crime ; a 
sound military system is no mean school of virtue ; and war, 
as I have said before, has in its vicissitudes, and much more 
in the moral qualities which it calls into action, a deep and 
abiding interest for every one worthy of the name of man. 

Economical questions arise obviously out of the history of 
all wars, although careless readers are very apt to neglect 
them. They arise out of that simple law of our nature 
which makes it necessary for every man to eat and drink 
and be clothed. Common readers, and I am afraid I may 
add, many historians also, appear to write and read about 
military operations without recollecting this. We hear of 
armies marching, advancing, and retreating, besieging towns, 
fighting battles, being engaged actively for some weeks or 
months, and are apt to think of them solely as moving or 
fighting machines, whose success depends on the skill with 
which their general plays them, as if they were really so 
many chess-men. Yet one would think it was sufficiently 
obvious that these armies are made up of men who must eat 
and drink every day, and who wear clothing. Of the expense 
and difficulty of maintaining them it is not easy, I grant, 
for private persons in peace to form any adequate idea. (5) 
Yet here we may gain something more of a notion of it than 



LECTURE III. 165 

can be obtained readily in a private family. A college will 
contain perhaps seventy or eighty members ; let any man 
but look round the hall at dinner ; or let him go into the 
kitchen and see the number of joints at the fire, or let him 
ask the number of pounds of meat required for the daily con- 
sumption of the college, and see what the cost will amount 
to. Then he may think what it is to provide for the food, 
not of eighty or of ninety persons, but of twenty, or of forty, 
or of sixty, or even of a hundred thousand. All this multi- 
tude doing nothing to raise food or make clothing for them- 
selves, must be fed and clothed out of the wealth of the 
community. Again this community may have to maintain, 
not one of these armies but several, and large fleets besides, 
and this for many years together; while it may often happen 
that its means of doing so are at the same time crippled : its 
foreign trade may be cut off, or large portions of its territory 
may be laid waste ; while the event of the contest being un- 
certain, and defeat and ruin being a possible consequence of 
it, hope and confidence are checked, and with them credit 
perishes also. Is it then a light matter first to provide the 
necessary resources for such a contest, and next to see that 
they are not spent wastefully ? With regard to providing 
them, there is first the great question betv/een direct taxation 
and loans. Shall we Pay the whole burden of the contest 
upon the present generation, or divide it between ourselves 
and posterity ? Conceive now the difficulties, the exceeding 
temptations, which beset the decision of this question. In a 
free government it may be doubtful whether the people will 
consent to raise the money or no. But suppose that legally 
they have no voice in the matter, that the government may 
'ay on what taxes it will ; still extreme discontent at home 
is not likely to be risked in the midst of foreign war ; or if 
the people are willing to bear the burden still the power may 
be wanting. A tax may easily destroy itself: that is, sup 



166 LECTURE III. 

pose that a man's^ trade just yields him a profit which he can 
live upon, and a tax is laid upon him to the amount of a 
fourth part of his profit. If he .xaises the price of his com- 
modity to the. consumer, the consumer will either purchase 
so much the less of it, or will endeavour to procure it from 
other countries where the dealer being less heavily taxed can 
afford to sell on cheaper terms. Then the government inter- 
poses to protect the taxed native dealer by prohibiting the 
importation of the commodity of the untaxed foreigner. But 
such a prohibition running counter to a plain rule of common 
sense, which makes every man desire to buy a cheaper article 
rather than a dearer, when both are of equal goodness, it can 
only be maintained by force. Thence arises the necessity of a 
large constabulary or preventive force to put down smuggling, 
and, to say nothing of the moral evils produced by such a 
state of things, it is clear that the expense of the additional 
preventive force which the new tax rendered necessary, is 
all to be deducted from the profits of that tax ; and this de. 
duction, added to the falling off in its productiveness occa- 
sioned by the greater poverty of the tax-payer, may reduce 
its return almost to nothing. Suppose then that a statesman, 
appalled by all these difficulties, resolves to share the burden 
with posterity, and begins to raise money by loans. No 
doubt for the present his work is greatly facilitated ; instead 
of providing for the principal of the money which he wants, 
he has only to provide for the interest of it. But observe 
what follows. In the first place, by an almost universal law 
of our nature, money lightly gained is lightly spent : a reve- 
nue raised at the expense of posterity is sure to be squandered 
wastefully. Waste as usual begetting want, the sums raised 
by loans will commonly be large. Now these large sums 
are a mortgage on all the property, on all the industry, on 
al] the skill and ability of a country forever. Every acre 
"^f land from henceforth has not only to maintain its owner 




LECTURE III. 167 

and his family^ aEd to answer trie jnSt^m^li^s of the actual 
public service, butit has also to feed one or more extraneous 
persons besides, the ^::ate's -crj^ditors or their heirSjiWho in 
times past lent it their mofl^^^ljSvei^y-'mra;i|^:w^ha^^ould have 
laboured twelve hours for the support^of his family and the 
public service of his own generation, must labour one or two 
hours in addition, for the support of a stranger, the state's 
creditor. So with all its property, with all its industry, with 
all its powers thus burdened, thus strained to the very ex- 
tremity of endurance, the nation is committed to the vicissi- 
tudes of all comincT time, to run in the race with other nations 
who are in the full freshness of their unstrained strength ; to 
battle with occasional storms which would try the lightest 
and stoutest vessel, but in which one already overloaded till 
the timbers are well nigh starting, must necessarily expect to 
founder. 

Such then being the financial or economical difficulties be- 
setting every great contest, it is no mean wisdom to avoid 
them as far as is possible ; to make the people so keenly 
enter into the necessity of the contest that they will make 
real sacrifices to maintain it ; so to choose the subjects of 
taxation, and so to distribute its burden, as to make it press 
with the least possible severity, neither seriously impairing a 
people's resources, nor irritating their feelings by a sense of 
its inequality. If a statesman after all finds that he must 
borrow — and I am far from denying that such a necessity 
has sometimes existed — it is no mean administrative wisdom 
to enforce the strictest economy in his expenditure ; rigor^ 
ously to put down and punish all jobbing, whether in high 
quarters or in low, but more especially in the former ; tc 
resist the fatal temptation of having frequent recourse to an 
expedient promising present ease and only threatening future 
ruin ; and to keep his eye steadily upon the payment within 
u definite time of the sums which he is oblisred to borrow. 



168 LECTURE III. 

That this is a most rare and high wisdom we shall learn 
from history, by seeing the fatal consequences of the opposite 
follies : consequences wide, and deep, and lasting ; and af- 
fecting not only a nation's physical welfare, but through it 
surely and fatally corrupting its higher welfare also. 

One example of this sad truth may be taken from a for- 
eign history ; the other which I shall give affects us yet 
more closely. We know in how many wars France was 
engaged throughout the eighteenth century. We know that 
in the Seven Years' War her efforts were great and her de- 
feats overwhelming, while her government was in the highest 
degree wasteful and unequal in its dealings towards the dif- 
ferent classes of society. We know that about fifteen years 
afterwards France again engaged in our American- war, and 
supported a very expensive contest, still aggravated as before 
by wastefulness, corruption, and injustice at home, for the space 
of five years. A general embarrassment in the finances was 
the consequence, and this iDrought the old and inveterate evils 
of the political and social state of France to a head. Both 
together led, not to the revolution, but to those tremendous 
disorders which accompanied and followed the revolution ; 
disorders quite distinct from it, and which were owing mainly 
to the extremely unhealthy state of the social relations in 
France, to which unhealthy state wide-spreading distress, 
brought on by a most unequal and corrupt system of taxation, 
had largely contributed. 

The other, and unhappily the nearer instance, is yet even 
more significant. Whatever distress or difficulty at this 
moment surrounds us, has its source in a very great degree 
in financial or economical causes. Of course I am not going 
to offer any opinion as to the present or future ; I am merely 
referring to what is an historical fact belonging to the past. 
It is a fact beyond all controversy that the wars of the last 
century, and particularly that great war which raged during 



LECTURE ill. 169 

the first fifteen years of the present century, were supported 
largely by loans ; it is no less certain a fact that of the debt 
thus contracted a sum amounting to above £700,000,000 is 
still unpaid, and that more than half of our yearly revenue, 
to say the least, is appropriated to paying the interest of it. 
That such a burden must be too much for the resources or 
industry of any country to bear without injury, would seem 
to be a proposition absolutely self-evident. Every interest 
in the country is subject to unfair disadvantages in the com- 
petition with foreigners ; every interest being heavily taxed 
is either unable, or able only by the most extraordinary ex- 
ertions, to sustain itself in the market of the world against 
untaxed or lightly taxed rivals. Now the evils being enor- 
mous, and so far as we can see perpetual, it does become an 
important question to ask, whether they were also inevitable ? 
that is to say, whether, if the same circumstances were to 
occur again, which is a matter not within our control, we 
should have no choice but to adopt the very same financial 
expedients. It may be that the sums raised, and nothing 
less, were required by the urgency of the crisis ; it may be that 
no larger portion of them could have been raised by present 
taxation than was so raised actually ; it may be that nothing 
more could have been done to liquidate the debt v/hen con- 
tracted than has been done actually. But where the meas- 
ures adopted have been so ruinous, we must at least be dis- 
posed to hope that they might have been avoided ; that here, 
as in so many other mstances, the fault rests not with fortune 
or with outv/ard circumstances, but with human passion and 
human error. 

Such is the importance and such the interest of the econom- 
ical questions which arise out of the history of the great ex- 
ternal contests of modern Europe. The military questions 
jonnected with the same history, will form our next subject 
of inquiry ; and on this I propose to enter in my next lecture, 

15 



NOTES 



TO 



LECTURE III 



Note 1. — Page 154. 



In the Preface to the posthumous volume (vol. iii.) of tho His- 
tory of Rome, Archdeacon J. C. Hare, by whom it was edited, speaks 
of " the most remarkable among Dr. Arnold's talents, his singular 
geographical eye, wfeich enabled him to fmd as much pleasure in 
looking at a map, as lovers of painting in a picture by Raphael or 
Claude." (p. viii.) 

It may not, perhaps, be inappropriate here to direct attention to 
the raised maps as a new facility for the accurate study of geogra- 
phy, especially of mountainous regions : they give a notion, which 
it would be difficult to gain from the ordinary maps, of the compli- 
cated inequalities of Italy or Spain, for instance. 

Note 2. — Page 15u. 

" Few events in modern times ever seemed so unfavourable to 
the balance of power as the union between the French and Spanish 
monarchies. The former, already too mighty from her increased 
dominions, her central situation, and her warlike and enterprising 
people, could now direct the resources of that very state which haxi 
formerly weighed the heaviest in the opposite scale. By her pro- 
gressive encroachments most other states had been struck witk 
dismay^ not roused into resistance, and seemed more inclined to 
SQ8 for her alliance than to dare her enmity. But happily for Eu- 
rope, the throne of England at this period was filled by a prince of 
singular ability both in the council and the field. The first endeav- 
ours of William III. to oppose the succession of Philip, and from a 



NOTES TO LECTURE III. 17l 

Bonfoderacy against France, had been thwarted as much by his 
parliament as by foreign powers, and he had prudently yielded to 
the tide, but foresaw and awaited its ebbing. He continued to keep 
his objects steadily in sight, and even their ostensible relinquish- 
ment was only one of his methods to promote them. By acknow- 
ledging the new king of Spain, and professing great desire for 
peace, he disarmed the French government of its caution, and led 
it to disclose more and more its ambitious and grasping designs. 

" Nor were these long delayed. Within a few months Louis 
XIV. began to claim the privileges of the South American trade, 
struck several blows at British commerce, supplanted the Dutch in 
the Spanish Asiento, or contract for negroes, raised new works in 
the Flemish fortresses within sight of their frontier, and both in- 
creased and assembled his armies. Such conduct could not fail to 
provoke most highly the nations thus aggrieved ; and the public in- 
dignation, improved by William to the best advantage, gradually grew 
into a cry for war. The rising discontent in Spain was another 
circumstance auspicious to his views. He spared no labor, no ex- 
ertion ; he went in person to the Hague, where he carried on the 
most active and able negotiations, foiled all the counter-intrigues 
,of Louis, and at length succeeded in concluding the basis of the 
' Grand Alliance' between England, Austria, and the States Gene- 
ral, (Sept. 170L) The public mind being yet scarcely ripe for the 
decisive principles afterwards avowed and acted on, this treaty was 
very guarded in its phrases, and confined in its extent. The rights 
of the Archduke Charles were not yet asserted, nor those of Philip 
denied ; and the chief objects of the contracting parties seemed to 
be, that France might not retain its footing in the Netherlands, nor 
acquire any in the West Indies ; and that its crown and that of 
Spain might never be united on the same head." 

Lord Mahon's ' Hist, of the War of the Succssrion in Spaing 

chap. ii.,p. 41 

* * * "France was now (1711) so much weakened, ana so 
neirly overwhelmed, by the contest, that it seemed not only possi- 
ble, but easy to reduce her overgrown possessions. Her fortresses 
taken — her frontiers laid bare — her armies almost annihilated — her 
ffenerals disheartened and distrusted — her finances exhausted — her 



172 NOTES 

people starving-, she could no longer have defended the successive 
usurpations heaped up during the last half century ; and a barrier 
against their recurrence might now have been concerted, estab- 
lished, and maintained. It only remained for the allies to crown a 
glorious war by a triumphant peace. But all this fair prospect was 
overcast and darkened by a change in the government, and there- 
fore in the policy, of England. Queen Anne, since the deaths of 
her only child and of her husband, had nourished a secret leaning 
to her exiled family, and maintained the Duke of Marlborough and 
his party more from their successes than her inclinations. The 
Duchess of Marlborough had, indeed, great influence over her ma- 
jesty, and ruled her by the strong chains of habit ; but gradually 
lost her ascendency by her own violent and overbearing temper, 
and especially her haughty jealousy of Mrs. Masham, a dependant 
cousin, whom she had placed about the Queen as a bedchamber 
woman, and whom sfffe unexpectedly found distinguished by several 
marks of royal regard. A glass of water, thrown by the Duchess 
on the gown of Mrs. Masham, changed the destinies of Europe 
An humble relation was transformed into an aspiring rival ; and the 
Queen, quite estranged from her former favourite, carried her fond- 
ness from the person to the politics of her new one. Thus she feii 
into the hands of the Tories, then guided mainly by the subtle ca- 
bals of Harley, and the splendid genius of St. John. They did 
not venture to assail at once the recent services and deeply-rooted 
reputation of Marlborough, and thought it safer to undermine than 
to overthrow. He was induced to retain the command of the 
army ; and the existing administration was broken only by degrees. 
In June (1710) fell the Earl of Sunderland, the Foreign Secretary ; 
in August the Lord Treasurer Godolphin ; and the rest followed in 
succession. By some the seals of office were resigned, from others 
they were wrested ; and before the close of the year, the Tories 
were completely and triumphantly installed in the place of the 

Whigs. ..." 

Id., chap. ix. p. 347. 

After stating the result of the negotiations between England and 
f 'ranee. Lord Mahon adds — 

" Such, in a very few words, is the substance of the celebrated 
peace of Utrecht, which has always been considered a blot on the 



TO LECTURE 111. 173 

bright annals of England ; and which one of h5r greatest states- 
men, Lord Chatham, has pronounced ' the indelible reproach of the 
last generation.' We may, however, be allowed to think, that 
whilst the glory of the war belongs to the whole people, — whilst 
Blenheim and Ramillies v/ere prepared by British treasure, and 
won by British skill and British bravery, the disgrace of the 
peace, that low and unworthy result of such great achievements, 
should rest on only a small knot of factious partisans. Let it rest, 
above all, on Lord Bolingbroke ; whose genius, splendid as it was, 
seldom worked but for evil either in philosophy or politics." 

Id., chap. ix. p. 370. 

* * * " It is impossible," says Mr. Hallam, " to justify the 
course of that negotiation which ended in the peace of Utrecht. 
It was at best a dangerous and inauspicious concession, demanding 
every compensation that could be devised, and which the circum- 
stances of the war entitled us to require. France was still our 
formidable enemy ; the ambition of Louis was still to be dreaded, 
his intrigues to be suspected. That an English minister should 
have thrown himself into the arms of this enemy at the first over- 
ture of negotiation ; that he should have renounced advantages 
upon which he might have insisted ; that he should have restored 
Lille, and almost attempted to procure the sacrifice of Tournay ; 
that throughout the whole correspondence, and in all personal in- 
terviews with Torcy, he should have shown the triumphant Queen 
of Great Britain more eager for peace than her vanquished adver- 
sary ; that the two courts should have been virtually conspiring 
against those allies, without whom we had bound ourselves to enter 
on no treaty ; that we should have withdrawn our troops in the 
midst of a campaign, and even seized upon the towns of our con- 
federates while we left them exposed to be overcome by a superior 
force ,• that we should have first deceived those confederates by the 
most direct falsehood in denying our clandestine treaty, and then 
dictated to them its acceptance, are facts so disgraceful to Boling- 
broke, and in somewhat a less degree to Oxford, that they can 
hardly be palliated by establishing the expediency of the treat} 

Uself." 

Conalit. Hist of England^ chap. xvi. vol. iii. p. 294 



174 NOTES 



Note 3. — Page. 159. 

The Peace of Hubertsburg, between the King of Prussia and 
Maria Theresa, being signed on the 15th of February, 1763 — " Six 
weeks afterwards Frederick made a public entry into his capital, 
which he had not seen for six years ; he sat in an open carriage 
with Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick at his side, and the people of 
Berlin, thinned as they were in numbers, and well nigh ruined iu 
fortunes, by the long-protracted war, greeted with enthusiastic 
shouts the heroes of their country. Never had any sovereign 
waged so arduous a contest with more undeviating spirit or mor^ 
varying success. Of ten pitched battles where he commanded in 
person, he had been worsted in three, and victorious in seven. Ot 
six where other chiefs directed the Prussian armies, every one, 
except only Prince Henry's at Freyberg, had been a defeat. Ac- 
cording to Frederick's own computation, he had lost in these terri- 
ble seven years 180,000 soldiers, while of Russians there had fallen 
120,000, of Austrians 140,000, and of French 200,000. But such 
numbers, vast as they seem, give a most inadequate idea of all the 
misery, desolation, and havoc which this warfare had wrought. 
Pestilence had swept away many peaceful thousands; whole dis? 
tricts, especially in Brandenburg and Pomerania, were turned to 
wastes ; all the best dwellings laid in ashes ; the very seed-corn in 
part devoured, and none but women and children left to follow the 
plough I An officer reports that he rode through seven villages of 
Hesse in which he found only one single human being ; a clergy- 
man who was boiling horse-beans for his dinner I But no dan- 
gers could vanquish, no sufferings exhaust, the patriotic spirit of 
the Prussians. Seeing the independence of their country at stake, 
they scarcely even murmured or complained ; they showed them- 
selves ready in such a cause to encounter the worst perils with 
unshrinking courage, and endure the worst hardships with mag 
aanimous patience. I have always thought their conduct as a 
pecple, during the two appalling struggles of 1756 and 1813, de- 
serving of the highest admiration. From other countries and othei 
ages History can show several chiefs as great as Frederick, and 
many chiefs greater than Bliicher. Plow few, on the contrary, are 



TO LECTUEE III. 175 

the nations that, like the Prussian at these two periods, have stood 
firm against foreign invaders witla the utmost energy and the ut- 
most moderation combined, — ^never relenting in their just hostility, 
and never venting it, like some southern races, in deeds of tumult 
and assassination, — proud of their martial renown yet not blindly 
relying upon it, and always vindicating that pride by fresh achievements 
and accumulated glories ! " 

Lorci Mahon's Hist, of England^ ch, xxxviii. voL iv. p. 41 6. 



Note 4. — ^Page IGl. 

• It is indeed scarcely possible to speak with exaggeration of the 
pomp and pride of power displayed during N"apoleon's short resi- 
dence at Dresden, at the beginning of his Eussian campaign ; but 
if it become a question of substantial strength and of the durabiUty 
of the imperial power, a just estimate can be formed only by taking 
into consideration what Dr. Arnold has elsewhere noticed, and 
which stands in very significant contrast with the pageantry at 
Dresden : 

" When Napoleon saw kings and princes bowing before him at 
Dresden, Wellington was advancing victoriously in Spain." 

' Life and Correspondence,^ Appendix C, ix. 19. 

In the eloquent passage in this lecture, where Dr. Arnold speaks 
of the tremendous power of the French emperor being checked, 
resisted, and put down, " by none, and by nothing but the direct 
and manifest interposition of God," he gives a view of the disas- 
trous ending of the Russian campaign that is most impressive. It 
is a pity to suggest any thing that will weaken that impression, but 
when " direct and manifest interposition of God," apart from human 
agency, is spoken of, it can be understood only of the destruction 
of the French soldiery by the severities of the Russian winter, and 
that to this alone is the catastrophe to be attributed. It can hardly 
now be considered a question whether or no the failure of the in- 
vasion was owing entirely to the destructive cold, or to that to- 
gether with ruinous consequences from the burning of Moscow. It 
cannot with precision be said that it was by the elements alone — ■ 
cold, or fire, or both — that such destructive havoc was made with 



176 NOTES 

the French army ; nor is it necessary, for the pur^'ose of strongly 
presenting the thought of Divine interposition, to disparage humau 
agency. The fierce avenging courage of men may be an instru- 
ment, in the course of Providence, no less than the pitiless cold of 
a Siberian winter. A note, like one of these, is not an appropriate 
place to examine the various causes of the ruin of the expedition 
into Russia, nor would I presume to discuss the military questions 
respecting the campaign ; but when it is stated that the discomfiture 
is to be ascribed to nothing but the direct and manifest interposition 
of God, it might be thought that the calm judgment of history 
did not recognise the skill and foresight in planning and executing 
such an invasion, and justice would not be done to that indomitable 
bravery with which the injured nation withstood the invasion, and 
the energy with which the retreating army was harassed and de- 
stroyed during the disastrous retreat. It appears to be well estab- 
lished as an historical result, that Napoleon entered Moscow with 
an army so reduced in force, and beset with so many difficulties 
and dangers, as to render his position a desperate one — that he 
began the retreat most reluctantly, as a measure of inevitable ne- 
cessity, about three weeks too before the intensely cold weather 
came on — that, after the bloody fight at Malo-Jaroslawetz, he was 
compelled to retreat by the worst route, the same by which he had 
advanced, and that the cold only rendered more destructive the de- 
struction that had already been begun. 

In the account of " the Campaign of 1812 in Russia," written by 
Ihe Prussian general Clausewitz, who was in the Russian service, 
he arrives at these conclusions, p. 100 : 

" 1. That the French army reached Moscow already too much 
weakened for the attainment of the end of its enterprise. For the 
facts that one third of its force had been wasted before reaching 
Smolensko, and another before Moscow, could not fail to make 
an impression on the Russian officers in command, the Emperor, 
and the ministry, v/hich put an end to all notions cf peace a. '.11 
concession." 

" 2. That the actions at Wiazma, Krasnoi, and the Beresina, 
although no large bodies could be cited as cut off, occasioned enor- 
mous losses to the French ; and that, whatever critics may say of 
particular moments of the transaction, the entire destruction of tlia 



TO LECTITRE III. 177 

French army is to be ascribed to the unheard-of energy of the pur- 
suit, the results of which imagination could hardly exaggerate." 

Impartial French opinion, and at the same time high military 
authority, may be cited to show that Moscow was considered un- 
tenable for the French army even before the conflagration : it will 
be found in the ' Souvenirs'' of his own life by General Damas, who 
served with the invading army during the campaign, that he de- 
plored the pertinacity with which Napoleon postponed the retreat, 
and even considered the conflagration of Moscow a fortunate event, 
inasmuch as it was the means of preventing farther delay and de- 
struction still more disastrous 

" The direct and manifest interposition of God," that Dr, Arnold 
here speaks of, had been the subject of some lofty strains of Eng- 
lish poetry nearly contemporary with the events ; and sometimes 
the poet, with his higher aims of imaginative truth, is found to 
reach also more accuracy of fact than the historic commentator. 
In the present instance it is the Poet, more than the Lecturer, 
who does justice to human agency — to the deeds and the sufferings 
of men in the crisis of a desperate conflict, while the presence of 
a Divine power of retribution is not less recognised. The com- 
parison to the annihilation of the Assyrian host had already* been 
present to the imagination of Southey in one of his impassioned 
lyrics : 

" Witness that dread retreat, 
When God and natiire smote 
The tyrant in his pride ! 

No wider ruin overtook 
Sennacherib's impious host ; 
Nor when the frantic Persian led 
His veterans to the Lybian sands ; 
Nor when united Greece 
O'er the barbaric power that victory won 
Which Europe yet may bless. 
A fouler tyrant cursed the groaning earth, 
A fearfuUer destruction was dispensed. 
Victorious armies foUow'd on his flight ; 
On eveiy side he met 
The Cossacks' dreadful spear ! 
On every side he saw 
The injured nation rise 
Invincible in arms." 

' Poetical IForks,' vol. ill 94L 



178 NOTES 

In that series of poems which Wordsworth has worthily inscribed 
as ' dedicated to Liberty,' the suhject is so treated as to show the 
Divine interposition made manifest in human agency as well as in 
the power of the elements — the work of destruction begun by the 
self-devotion and the courage of men, and finished by ' faminOj 
snow, and frost :' — 

* * * * * 
" No pitying voice commands a halt, 

No courage can repel the dire assault ; 
Distracted, spiritless, benumbed, and blind, 
Whole legions sink — and, in one instant, find 
Burial and death : look for them — and descry, 
When morn returns, beneath the clear blue sky 
A soundless waste, a trackless vacancy !" 

"By Moscow self-devoted to a blaze 
Of dreadful sacrifice ; by Russian blood 
Lavish'd in fight with desperate hardihood ; 
The unfeeling Elements no claim shall raise 
To rob our Hviman Nature of just praise 
For what she did and suffer'd. Pledges sure 
Of a deliverance absolute and pure 
She gave, if Faith might tread the beaten ways 
Of Providence. But now did the Most High 
Exalt his still small voice; — to quell that host 
Gathered his power, a manifest ally ; 
He, whose heap'd waves confounded the proud boast 
Of Pharaoh, said to Famine, Snow, and Frost, 

* Finish the strife by deadliest victory !' " 

' Poetical Works,'' vol. ill. pp. 238 and S40. 

NoTE 5. — Page 164. 

The best way, perhaps, to correct the inadequacy here alluded 
lo in our ordinary notions of warfare, and to obtain a theoretical 
sense of the importance of the ' economics' of war, will be by 
the perusal of the correspondence of those who are in command— 
for example, the official military letters of Washington, or the dis- 
patches of Wellington. From these the reader may form some 
conception of the difficulty of provisioning an army — of clothing 
and daily feeding a large assemblage of soldiers — of the care of the 
sick and wounded, &c. &c. I cannot dismiss a reference to the 



TO LECTURE III. 179 

hiililary correspondence of Washington and "Wellington without 
noticing how much each is characterized by the same qualities in 
the writers — of good sense, or (to use a more adequate term) the 
highest practical wisdom — of singleness of purpose — of heroism 
genuine and unostentatious — of integrity and an ever-present sense 
of duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice ; and with these qualities a 
straight-forward simplicity of style — such as has been truly said to 
be the soldierly style — the style that is common to these great cap- 
tains of modern times, and to Xenophon and Caesar. 



LECTURE IV. 



At the very beginning of this lecture I must myself remind 
you, lest it should occur to your own minds if I were to omit 
it, of that well-known story of the Greek sophist who dis- 
coursed at length upon the art of war, when Hannibal hap- 
pened to be amongst his audience. Some of his hearers, full 
of admiration of his eloquence and knowledge, for such it 
seemed to them, eagerly applied to the great general for his 
judgment, not doubting that it would confirm their own. But 
Hannibal's answer was, that he had met with many absurd 
old men in his life, but never with one so absurd as this lec- 
turer. The recollection of this story should ever be present 
to unmilitary men, when they attempt to speak about war ; 
and though there may be no Hannibal actually present 
amongst us, yet I would wish to speak as cautiously as if my 
words were to be heard by one as competent to judge them 
as he was. 

But although the story relates to the art of war only, yet 
it is in fact universally applicable. The unprofessional man, 
iSidrrig, must speak with hesitation in presence of a master 
of his craft. And not only in his presence, but generally, 
he who is a stranger to any profession must be aware of his 
own disadvantages when speaking of the subject of that pro- 
fession. Yet consider, on the other hand, that no one man 
in the common course of things has more than one profession; 
is he then to be silent, or to feel himself incapable of passing 
a judgment upon the subjects of all professions except that 



J82 ' , LECTURE IV. 

one ? And consider farther, that professional men may labor 
under some disadvantages of their own, looking at their call- 
ing from within always, and never from without ; and from 
their very devotion to it, not being apt to see it in its relations 
with other matters. Farther still, the writer of history seems 
under the necessity of overstepping this professional barrier : 
he must speak of wars, he must speak of legislation, he must 
often speak of religious disputes, and of questions of political 
economy. Yet he cannot be at once soldier, seaman, states- 
man, lawyer, clergyman, and merchant. Clearly then there 
is a distinction to be drawn somewhere, there must be a point 
up to which an unprofessional judgment of a professional 
subject may be not only competent but of high authority j 
although beyond that point it cannot venture without pre- 
sumption and folly. 

The distinction seems to lie originally in the difference 
between the power of doing a thing, and that of perceiving 
whether it be well done or not. He who lives in the house, 
says Aristotle, is a better judge of its being a good or a bad 
one, than the builder of it. He can tell not only whether 
the house is good or bad, but wherein its defects consist ; he 
can say to the builder. This chimney smokes, or has a bad 
draught : or this arrangement of the rooms is inconvenient ; 
and yet he may be quite unable to cure the chimney, or to 
draw out a plan for his rooms which would on the whole sui^ 
him better. Nay, sometimes he can even see where the 
fault is which has caused the mischief, and yet he may not 
know practically how to remedy iU Following up this prin- 
ciple, it would appear that what we understand least in the 
profession of another is the detail of his practice ; we may 
appreciate his object, may see where he has missed it, or 
where he is pursuing it ill ; nay, may understand generally 
the method of setting about it ; but we 'fail in the minute de- 
tails. Applying this to the art of war, and we shall see, 1 



LECTURE IV. 183 

think, that the part which unprofessional men can least 
understand is what is technically called tactic, the practical 
management of the men in action or even upon parade ; the 
handling, so to speak, of themselves, no less than the ac- 
tual handling of their weapons. Let a man be as versed as 
he will in military history, he must well know that in these 
essential points of the last resort he is helpless, and the com- 
monest sergeant, or the commonest soldier, knows infinitely 
more of the matter than he does. But in proportion as we 
recede from these details to more general points, first to what 
is technically called strategy, that is to say, the directing the 
movements of an army with a view to the accomplishment of 
the object of the campaign ; and next to the whole conduct 
of the war, as political or moral questions may affect it, in 
that proportion general knowledge and powers of mind come 
into play, and an unprofessional person may without blame 
speak or write on military subjects, and may judge of them 
sufficiently. (1) 

Thus much premised, we may venture to look a little at 
the history of the great external contests of Europe, and as 
all our historians are full of descriptions of wars and battles, 
we will see what lessons are to be gained from them, and 
what questions arise out of them. 

The highest authority in such matters, the Emperor Napo- 
leon, has told us expressly that as a study for a soldier there 
'A^ere only four generals in modern history whose campaigns 
were worth following in detail ; namely, Turenne, Montecu- 
culi, Eugene of Savoy, and Frederick of Prussia. (2) It 
was only an unworthy feeling which made him omit the name 
of Marlborough ; and no one could hesitate to add to the list 
his own. But he spoke of generals who were dead, and of 
course in adding no other name to this catalogue, I am fol- 
lowing the same rule. Marlborough and Eugene, Frederick 
and Napoleon, are gf iierals whose greatness the commonest 



184 LECTURE IV. 

reader can feel, because he sees the magnitude of their ex. 
ploits. But the campaigns of Turenne and Montecuculi or. 
the Rhine, where they were opposed to each other, although 
Napoleon's testimony is quite sufficient to establish their 
value as a professional study for a soldier, are yet too much 
confined to movements of detail to be readily appreciated by 
others. Turenne's military reputation we must for the most 
part take upon trust, not disputing it, but being unable to ap- 
preciate it. On the other hand, the general reader will turn 
with interest to many points of military history which Napo- 
leon disregarded : the greatness of the stake at issue, the 
magnitude of the events, the moral or intellectual qualities 
displayed by the contending parties, are to us exceedingly 
interesting ; although I confess that I think the interest 
heightened when there is added to all these elements that of 
consummate military ability besides. 

One of the most certain of all lessons of military history^ 
although some writers have neglected it, and some have even 
disputed it, is the superiority of discipline to enthusiasm. 
Much serious mischief has been done by an ignorance or 
disbelief of this tr.uth ; and if ever the French had landed in 
this country in the early part of the late war, we might have 
been taught it by a bitter experience. The defeat of Cope's 
army by the Highlanders at Preston Pans is no exception to 
this rule, for it was not the enthusiasm of the Highlanders 
which won the day, but their novel manner of fighting which 
perplexed their enemies ; and the Highlanders had besides a 
discipline of their own which made them to a certain degree 
efficient soldiers. But as soon as the surprise was over, and 
an officer of even moderate ability was placed at the head of 
the royal army, the effect of the higher discipline and superior 
tactic of one of the regular armies of Europe became instantly 
visible, and the victory at Culloden was won with no diffi- 
culty. Even in Fiance, where the natural genius of the 



LECTURE IV. 185 

people for war is greater than in any other country, and 
although the enthusiasm of the Vendeans was directed bv 
officers of great ability, yet the arrival of the old soldiers of 
the garrison of Mentz immediately decided the contest, and 
gave them a defeat from which they could never recover. (3) 
On the other hand, while not even the most military nations 
can become good soldiers without discipline, yet with disci- 
pline even the most unmilitary can be made efficient ; of 
which no more striking instance can be given than the high 
military character of our Sepoy army in India. The first 
thing then to be done in all warfare, whether foreign or do- 
mestic, is to discipline our men, and till they are thoroughly 
disciplined to avoid above all things the exposing them to any 
general actions with the enemy. History is full indeed of 
instances of great victories gained by a very small force over 
a very large one ; but not by undisciplined men, however 
brave and enthusiastic, over those who were well disciplined, 
except under peculiar circumstances of surprise or local 
advantages, such as cannot affect the truth of the general 
rule. 

It is a question of some interest, whether history justifies 
the belief of an inherent superiority in some races of men 
over others, or whether all such differences are only acci- 
dental and temporary ; and we are to acquiesce in the judg- 
ment of king Archidamus, that one man naturally differs little 
from another, but that culture and training makes the dis 
tinction. There are some very satisfactory examples to 
show that a nation must not at any rate assume lightly that 
it is superior to another, because it may have gained great 
victories over it. Judging by the experience of the period 
from 1796 to 1809, we might say that the French were de- 
cidedly superior to the Austrians ; and so the campaign of 
1806 might seem to show an equal superiority over the Prus. 
aians. Yet in the long struggle jjetween the Austrian and 



186 LECTURE IV. 

French monarchies, the military success of each are wonder- 
fully balanced ; in 1796, whilst Napoleon was defeating 
army after army in Italy, the archduke Charles was driving 
Jourdan and Moreau before him out of Germany ; and Fred- 
erick the Great defeated the French at Rosbach as completely 
and easily as Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena. The 
military character of the Italians is now low : yet without 
going back to the Roman times, we find that in the sixteenth 
century the inhabitants of the Roman states were reputed to 
possess in an eminent degree the qualities of soldiers, and 
some of the ablest generals of Europe, Alexander Farnese 
prince of Parma, Spinola, and Montecuculi, were natives ol 
Italy. In our own contests with France, our superiority ha& 
not always been what our national vanity would imagine it ; 
Philip Augustus and Louis the Ninth were uniformly suc- 
cessful against John and Henry the Third ; the conquests of 
Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth were followed by pe- 
riods of equally unvaried disasters ; and descending to later 
times, if Marlborough was uniformly victorious, yet king 
William when opposed to Luxembourg, and the duke of 
Cumberland when opposed to Marshal Saxe, were no less 
uniformly beaten. Such examples are, I think, satisfactory ; 
for judging calmly, we would not surely wish that one nation 
should be uniformly and inevitably superior to another ; I do 
not know what national virtue could safely be subjected to so 
severe a temptation. If there be, as perhaps there are, some 
physical and moral qualities enjoyed by some nations in a 
higher degree than by others, and this, so far as we see, con- 
stitutionally ; yet the superiority is not so great but that a 
little over presumption and carelessness on one side, or a lit- 
tle increased activity and more careful discipline on the other, 
and still more any remarkable individual genius in the gen- 
erals or in the government, may easily restore the balance, 
or even turn it the other way. It is quite a different thing 



LECTURE IV. 187 

and very legitimate to feel that we have such qualities as will 
save us from ever being despicable enemies, or from being 
easily defeated by others ; but it is much better that we 
should not feel so confident, as to think that others must 
always be defeated by us. (4) 

But the thoughtful student of military history Vv^ill find 
other questions suggesting themselves of a deeper interest ; 
he will consider whether the laws of war, as at present 
acknowledged, are not susceptible of further improvement ; 
he will wish to make out the real merits of certain cases, 
which historians seem always to decide from mere partial 
feelings, §,ccording to the parties concerned, rather than by 
any fixed principle. For what is sometimes and by one party 
called an heroic national resistance, is by others called insur- 
rection and brigandage ; and what, according to one version, 
are but strong and just severities for the maintenance of peace, 
are^ according to another, wholesale murders and military 
massacres. Now certainly, if there be no other rule in this 
matter than the justice of either party's cause, the case is 
evidently incapable of decision till the end of time ; for in 
every war, whether civil or foreign, both sides always main- 
tain that they are in the right. But this being a point always 
assumed by one party and denied by the other, it is much 
better that it should be put aside altogether, and that the 
merits or demerits of what is called a national war should 
be tried on some more tangible and acknowledged ground. 
Now it seems one of the greatest improvements of the modern 
laws of war, that regular armies are considered to be the 
only belligerents, and that the inhabitants of a country which 
shall happen to be the seat of war, shall be regarded as neu- 
trals; and protected both in their persons and property. It is 
held that such a system does but prevent gratuitous horrors ; a 
treacherous and assassinating kind of warfare on one side, and 
on the other cruelties and outrages of the worst description, in 



188 LECTURE IV. 

which the most helpless part of the population, the sick and 
the ao-ed, women and children, are the oreatest sufferers. 
But it is quite essential that this system of forbearance should 
be equally observed by both parties ; if soldiers plunder or 
set fire to a village they cannot complain if the inhabitants 
cut off their straffg-lers, or shoot at them from behind walls 
and hedges ; and, on the other hand, if the inhabitants of a 
village will go out on their own account to annoy an enemy's 
march, to interrupt his communications, and to fire upon his 
men wherever they can find them, they too must be patient 
if the enemy in return burn their village, and hang them up 
as brigands. For it is idle to say that the mere circumstance 
that an army isnnvading its enemy's country, puts it out of 
the pale of civilized hostility ; or, at any rate, if this be 
maintained, it is worse than idle to say that it may not re 
taliate this system, and put out of the pale of civilized hostil- 
ity those who have begun so to deal with them. The truth 
is, that if war, carried on by regular armies under the strict- 
est discipline, is yet a great evil, an irregular partisan 
warfare is an evil ten times more intolerable ; it is in faci 
no other than to give a license to a whole population to com- 
mit all sorts of treachery, rapine, and cruelty without any 
restraint ; letting loose a multitude of armed men, with none 
of the obedience and none of the honourable feelings of a 
soldier ; cowardly because they are undisciplined, and cruel 
because they are cowardly. It seems then the bounden duty 
of every government, not only not to encourage such irregu- 
lar warfare on the part of its population, but carefully to 
repress it, and to oppose its enemy only with its regular 
iroops, or with men regularly organized, and acting under 
authorized officers, who shall observe the ordinary humanities 
of civilized war. And what are called patriotic insurrections, 
or irregular risings of the whole population to annoy an in- 
vading army by all means, ought impartially to be condemn' 



LECTURE IV. ]89 

ed, by whomsoever and against whomsoever practised, as a 
resource of* small and doubtful efficacy, but full of certain 
atrocity, and a most terrible aggravation of the evils of war. 
Of course, if an invading army sets the example of such 
irregular warfare, if they pi-oceed after the manner of the 
ancients t(? lay waste the country in mere wantonness, to 
burn houses, and to be guilty of personal outrages on the 
inhabitants, then they themselves invite retaliation, and a 
guerilla warfare against such an invader becomes justifiable. 
But our censure in all cases should have reference not to the 
justice of the original war, which is a point infinitely dis- 
putable, but to the simple fact, which side first set the 
example of departing from the laws of civilized warfare, and 
of beginning a system of treachery and atrocity. 

As this is a matter of some importance, I may be allowed 
to dwell a little longer upon a vague notion not uncommonly, 
as I believe, entertained, that a people whose country is at- 
tacked, by which is meant whose territory is the seat of war, 
are sustaining some intolerable wrong which they are justi- 
fied in repelling by any and every means. But in the natu- 
ral course of things, war must be carried on in the territory 
of one belligerent or of the other ; it is an accident merely 
if their fighting ground happen to be the country of some 
third party. Now it cannot be said that the party which 
acts on the offensive, war having been once declared, becomes 
in the wrong by doing so, or that the object of all invasion is 
conquest. You invade your enemy in order to compel him 
to do you justice ; that is, to force him to make peace on 
reasonable terms. This is your theory of the case, and it is 
one which must be allowed to be maintainable just as much 
as your enemy's, for all laws of war waive and must waive 
the question as to the original justice of the quarrel ; they 
assume that both parties are equally in the right. But sup. 
pose invasion for the sake of conquest, I do not say of the 



190 LECTURE IV. 

whole of your enemy's country, but of that portion of it 
which you are invading ; as we have many times invaded 
French colonies with a view to their incorporation perma • 
nently with the British dominions. Conquests of such a sort 
are no violations necessarily of the legitimate object of war, 
they may be considered as a security taken for the time to 
come. Yet undoubtedly the shock to the inhabitants of the 
particular countries so invaded is very great ; it was not a 
light thing for the Canadian, or the inhabitant of Trinidad, 
or of the Cape of Good Hope,* to be severed from the people 
of his own blood and language, from his own mother state, 
and to be subjected to the dominion of foreigners, men with 
a strange language, strange manners, a different church, and a 
different law. That the inhabitants of such countries should 
enlist very zealously in the militia, and should place the re- 
sources of defence very readily in the hands of the govern- 
ment, is quite just and quite their duty ; I am only depre- 
cating the notion that they' should rise in irregular warfare, 
each man or each village for itself, and assail the invaders as 
their personal enemies, killing them whenever and wherever 
they can find them. Or again, suppose that the invasion is 
undertaken for the purpose of overthrowing the existing 
government of a country, as the attempted French descents 
to co-operate with the Jacobites, or the invasion of France by 
the coalesced powers in 1792 and 1793, and again in 1814 
and 1815. When the English army advanced into France 
in 1814, respecting persons and property, and paying for 
every article of food which they took from the country, 
would it have been for the inhabitants to barricade every 
village, to have lurked in every thicket and behind every 
wall to shoot stragglers and sentinels, and keep up night and 
day a war of extermination ? (5) If indeed the avowed ob- 
ject of the invader be the destruction not of any particular 
government, bu< of the national existence altogether ; if he 



LECTURE IV. 191 

ulius disclaims the usual object of legitimate war, a fair and 
lasting peace, and declares that he makes it a war of exter- 
mination, he doubtless cannot complain if the usual laws of 
war are departed from against him, when he himself sets the 
example. But even then, when we consider what unspeak- 
able atrocities a partisan warfare gives birth to, and that no 
nation attacked by an overwhelming force of disciplined 
armies was ever saved by such means, it may be doubted 
even tnen whether it be justifiable, unless the invader drives 
the inhabitants to it, by treating them from the beginning as 
enemies, and outraging their persons and property. If this 
judgment seem extreme to any one, I would only ask him to 
consider well first the cowardly, treacherous, and atrocious 
character of all guerilla warfare, and in the next place the 
certain misery which it entails on the country which prac- 
tises it, and its inefficacy, as a general rule, to conquer or 
expel an enemy, however much it may annoy him. 

Other questions will also occur to us, questions I grant of 
some theoretical and much practical difficulty, yet which 
surely require to be seriously considered. I allude particu- 
larly to the supposed right of sacking a town taken by assault, 
and of blockading a town defended not by the inhabitants 
but by a garrison wholly independent of their control ; the 
known consequences of such a blockade being the starvation 
of the inhabitants before the garrison can be made to suffer. 
The extreme hardness in such cases is that the penalty falls 
chiefly on the innocent. When a town is sacked we do not 
commonly hear of the garrison being put to the sword in cold 
blood, on the plea that they have no right to quarter. Gen- 
eral Philippon and his garrison laid down their arms at Ba- 
dajoz, and were treated as prisoners of war, whilst the houses 
of the Spanish inhabitants were plundered. And be it re- 
membered, that when we speak of plundering a town after an 
assault, we veil under that softer name all crimes which man 



192 LECTURE IV, 

in his worst excesses can commit, horrors so atrocious that 
their very atrocity preserves them from our full execration, 
because it makes it impossible to describe them. On this 
subject, on the abominable character of such scenes, and the 
possibility of preventing them, I will give you not my own 
crude opinion, who know aothing of the actual state of armies 
at such moments, but that of a veteran soldier, who knows 
well the horrors of war while he deeply feels its stirring 
power, and its opportunities of nobleness, the historian of the 
war in the Spanish peninsula. General Napier's language 
is as follows : 

" It is a common but shallow and mischievous notion, thai 
a villain makes never the worse soldier for an assault, be- 
cause the appetite for plunder supplies the place of honour ; 
as if the compatibility of vice and bravery rendered the union 
of virtue and courage unnecessary in warlike matters. In 
all the host which stormed San Sebastian, there was not a 
man who being sane would for plunder only have encountered 
the danger of that assault, yet under the spell of discipline 
all rushed eagerly to meet it. Discipline however has its 
root in patriotism, or how could armed men be controlled at 
all, and it would be wise and far from difficult to graft moder- 
ation and humanity upon such a noble stock. The modern 
soldier is not necessarily the stern bloody-handed man the 
ancient soldier was ; there is as much difference between 
them as between the sportsman and the butcher; the ancient 
warrior fighting with the sword and reaping his harvest of 
death when the enemy was in flight, became habituated to the 
act of slaying. The modern soldier seldom uses his bayonet, 
sees not his peculiar victim fall, and exults not over mangled 
limbs as proofs of personal prowess., (6) Hence preserving 
his original feelings, his natural abhorrence of murder and 
crimes of violence, he differs not from other men unless often 
engaged in the assault of towns, where rapacity, lust, and 



LECTURE IV. 193 

inebriety, unchecked by the restraints of discipline, are 
excited by temptation. It is said that no soldier can be re- 
strained after storming a town, and a British soldier least of 
all, because he is brutish and insensible to honour ! Shame 
on such calumnies ! What makes the British soldier fighl 
as no other soldier ever fights ? His pay ? Soldiers of all 
nations receive pay. At the period of this assault, a sergeant 
of the twenty-eighth regiment named Ball, had been sent 
with a party to the coast from Roncesvalles, to make pur- 
chases for his officers. He placed the money he was in- 
trusted with, two thousand dollars, in the hands of a commis- 
sary, and having secured a receipt, persuaded his party to 
join in the storm. He survived, reclaimed the money, made 
his purchases, and returned to his regiment. And these are 
the men, these are the spirits, who are called too brutish to 
work upon except by fear. It is precisely fear to which 
they are most insensible. 

" Undoubtedly if soldiers read and hear that it is impossible 
to restrain their violence, they will not be I'estrained. But 
let the plunder of a town after an assault be expressly made 
criminal by the articles of war, with a due punishment at- 
tached ; let it be constantly impressed upon the troops that 
such conduct is as much opposed to military honour and dis- 
cipline as it is to morality ; let a select permanent body of 
men receiving higher pay form a part of the army, and be 
■charged to follow storming columns to aid in preserving 
order, and with power to inflict instantaneous punishment, 
death if it be necessary. Finally, as reward for extraor- 
dinary valour should keep pace with chastisement for crimes 
committed under such temptation, it would be fitting that 
money, apportioned to the danger and importance of the ser- 
vice, should be ensured to the successful troops, and always 
paid without delay. This money might be taken as ransom 
from enemies, but if the inhabitants are friends, or tpo pqqr, 

17 



194 LECTURE IT. 

government should furnish the, amount. With such regufa- 
tions, the storming of towns would not produce more military 
disorders than the gaining of battles in the field."* 

The other case on which it seems desirable that the law 
of nations should either be amended, or declared more clearly 
and enforced in practice, is that of the blockade of towns not 
defended by their inhabitants, in order to force their surrender 
by starvation. And here let us try to realize to ourselves 
what such a blockade is. We need not, unhappily, draw a 
fancied picture ; history, and no remote history either, will 
supply us with the facts. Some of you, I doubt not, remem- 
ber Genoa ; you have seen that queenly city with its streets 
of palaces, rising tier above tier from the water, girdling 
with the long lines of its bright white houses the vast sweep 
of its harbour, the mouth of which is marked by a huge 
natural mole of rock, crowned by its magnificent light-house 
tower. You remember how its white houses rose out of a mass 
of fig, and olive, and orange-trees, the glory of its old patri- 
cian luxury ; you may have observed the mountains behind 
the town spotted at intervals by small circular low towers, 
one of which is distinctly conspicuous where the ridge of the 
hills rises to its summit, and hides from view all the country 
behind it. Those towers are the forts of the famous lines, 
which, curiously resembling in shape the later Syracusan 
walls enclosing Epipolse, converge inland from the eastern 
and western extremities of the city, looking down, the west- 
ern line on the valley of the Polcevera, the eastern on that of 
the Bisagno, till they meet as I have said on the summit of 
the mountains, where the hills cease to rise from the sea, and 
become more or less of a table-land running off towards the 
interior, at the distance, as well as I remember, of between 
two and three miles from the outside gf the city. Thus a 
very large open space is enclosed within the lines, and Genoa 

* History of the War in the Peninsula, vol, vi. p. 215 



LECTURE IV. 195 

is capable therefore of becoming a vast entrenched camp, 
holding not so much a garrison as an army. In the autumn 
of 1799 the Austrians had driven the French out of Lom- 
bardy and Piedmont ; their last victory of Fossano or Genola 
had won the fortress of Coni or Cuneo close under the Alps, 
and at the very extremity of the plain of the Po ; the French 
clung to Italy only by their hold of the Riviera of Genoa, 
the narrow strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea, 
which extends from the frontiers of France almost to the 
mouth of the Arno. Hither the remains of the French force 
were collected, commanded by General Massena, and the 
point of chief importance to his defence was the city of 
Genoa. Napoleon had just returned from Egypt, and was 
become First Consul ; but he could not be expected to take 
the field till the following spring, and till then Massena was 
hopeless of relief from without, every thing was to depend on 
his own pertinacity. The strength of his army made it im- 
possible to force it in such a position as' Genoa ; but its very 
num.bers, added to the population of a great city, held out to 
the enemy a hope of reducing it by famine ; and as Genoa 
derives most of its supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British 
naval comma"2der-in-chief in the Mediterranean, lent the 
assistance of nis naval force to the Austrians, and by the 
vigilance of bis cruisers, the whole coasting trade right and 
left along the Riviera was effectually cut off. It is not at 
once that the inhabitants of a great city, accustomed to the 
daily sight of well-stored shops and an abundant market, 
begm to realize the idea of scarcity ; or that the wealthy 
classes of society, who have never known any other state 
than one of. abundance and luxury, begin seriously to con- 
ceive of famine. But the shops were emptied, and the store- 
houses began to be drawn upon ; and no fresh supply or 
hope of supply appeared. Winter passed away, and spring 
returned, so early and so beautiful on that garden-like coast, 



196 LECTURE IV. 

sheltered as it is from the north winds by its belt of moun- 
tains, and open to the full rays of the southern sun. Spring 
returned, and clothed the hill sides within the lines with its 
fresh verdure. But that verdure was no longer the mere 
delight of the careless eye of luxury, refreshing the citizens 
by its liveliness and softness when they rode or walked up 
thither from the city to enjoy the surpassing beauty of the 
prospect. The green hill-sides were now visited for a very 
different object; ladies of the highest rank might be seen 
cutting up every plant which it was possible to turn to food, 
and bearing home the common weeds of our road sides as a 
most precious treasure. The French general pitied the distress 
of the people, but the lives and strength of his garrison seemed 
to him more important than the lives of the Genoese, and such 
provisions as remained were reserved in the first place for 
the French army. Scarcity became utter want, and want 
became famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of that gor- 
geous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of its 
humblest poor, death was busy ; not the momentary death of 
battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but 
the lingering and most miserable death of famine. Infants 
died before their parents' eyes, husba'^ds and wives lay down 
to expire together. A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825 
told me that his father and two of his brothers had been 
starved to death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the 
month of June, when Napoleon had already descended from 
the Alps into the plain of Lombardy, the misery became un- 
endurable, and Massena surrendered. But before he did so, 
twenty thousand innocent persons, old and young, women 
and children, had died by the most horrible of deaths which 
humanity can endure. Other horrors which occurred be- 
sides during this blockade I pass over ; the agonizing death 
of twenty thousand innocent and helpless per^ns requires 
nothing to be added to it. (7) 



LECTURE IV. 197 

Now is it right that such a tragedy as this should take 
placGj and that the laws of war should he supposed to justify 
the authors of it ? Conceive havinsj been a naval officer 
in Lord Keith's squadron at that time, and being employed 
in stopping the food which was being brought for the lelief 
of such misery. For the thing was done deliberately ; the 
helplessness of the Genoese was known, their distress was 
known ; it was known that they could not force Massena to 
surrender; it was known that they were dying daily by 
hundreds ; yet week after week, and month after month, did 
the British ships of war keep their iron watch along all the 
coast : no vessel nor boat laden with any article of provision 
could escape their vigilance. One cannot but be thankful 
that Nelson was -spared from commanding at this horrible 
blockade of Genoa. 

Now on which side the law of nations should throw the 
guilt of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative conse- 
quence, or whether it should attach it to both sides equally ; 
but that the deliberate standing to death of twenty thousand 
helpless persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both 
of the parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The 
simplest course would seem to be that all non-combatants 
should be allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the 
general who should refuse to let them pass, should be re- 
garded In the same light as one who were to murder his 
prisoners, or who were to be in the habit of butchering women 
and children. For it is not true that war only looks to the 
speediest and most effectual way of attaining its object, so 
that as the letting the inhabitants go out would enable the 
garrison to maintain the town longer, the laws of war author- 
ize the keeping them in and starving them. Poisoning wells 
might be a still quicker method of reducing a place, but do 
the laws of war therefore sanction it ? I shall not be sup- 
posed for a moment to be placing the guilt of the individuals 



198 LECTURE IV, 

concerned in the two cases which I am going lo compare, on 
an equal footing ; it would be most unjust to do so, for in the 
one case they acted, as they supposed, according to a law 
which made what they did their duty. But take the cases 
themselves, and examine them in all their circumstances ; 
the degree of suffering inflicted^ the innocence and helpless- 
ness of the sufferers, the interests at stake, and the possibility 
of otherwise securing them ; and if any man can defend the 
lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the inhabitants 
of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the lawfulness of the 
massacres of September. 

Other points of the received law of nations might be no- 
ticed, and more especially of maritime law, which require, 
to say the least, a full reconsideration. They will suggest 
themselves to the attentive reader of histpry, if his thoughts 
have been once turned in that direction. And, considering 
the magnitude of the interests involved, any defect in national 
law is surely no less important than a defect in civil law ; 
to lend a sanction to the passions*and injustice of men where 
they operate most extensively, is a sad perversion of the na- 
ture of law ; it is that corruption of the noblest thing which is 
itself the vilest. But in these inquiries, amidst all our con- 
demnation of a bad law, we must remember that its very evil 
consists mainly in this, that it throws its sanction over crime ; 
that is, that men commit crime as a thing lawful. The 
magnitude of the evil of a bad law is, I was almost going to 
say, the measure of the allowance to be granted to the indi- 
viduals whom it misleads ; at any rate it greatly diminishes 
their guilt. And for this reason I chose in the instances 
which I gave of faulty national law, to take those in which 
our countrymen acted upon the bad law, rather than those in 
which it was acted upon by foreigners or enemies. In our 
own case we are willing enough to make that allowance 
which in the case of others we might be inclined to refuse. 



LECTURE IV. 199 

Gen-e rally, however, I confess, that amongst ourselves, and 
when we are not concerned to establish our own just claims 
to the respect of others, I think that it is more useful to con- 
template our own national faults and the worthy deeds of 
other nations, than to take the opposite course ; or even to 
dwell singly upon our own glories, or on the dishonour of 
others. For there can be, I imagine, no danger of our admi- 
ring our neighbours too much, oi ourselves too little. It can- 
not be necessary to enlarge before an English audience upon 
the greatness of England, whether past or present : it cannot 
be necessary for an Englishman to express in so many words 
his love and admiration for his country. It is because Eng- 
land is so great, and our love for our country is so deep and 
so just, that we can not only afford to dwell upon the darker 
spots in our history, but we absolutely require them, lest our 
love and admiration should become idolatrous ; it is because 
we are only too apt to compare foreign nations with our- 
selves unfavourably, that it is absolutely good for us to con- 
template what they have suffered unjustly or done worthily. 
Connected with the last point which I have been noticing, 
is another which appears to me of importance in studying 
military or external history, and that is, to apprehend cor- 
rectly in every war what are the merits of the quarrel. I do 
not mean only so far as such an apprehension is essential to 
our sympathizing rightly with either of the parties concerned 
in it, but with a higher object; that we may see, namely, 
what have been ordinarily the causes of wars, and then con- 
sider whether they have been sufficient to justify recourse to 
such an extreme arbitrament. For as I speak freely of the 
intense interest of military history, and the great sympathy 
due to the many heroic qualities which war calls into action, 
so we must never forget that war is after all a very great 
svil ; and though I believe that theoretically the Quakers are 
wrong in pronouncing all wars to be unjustifiable, yet I con- 



200 LECTURE T. 

fess that historically the exceptions to their doctrine have 
been comparatively few ; that is to say, as in every war one 
party I suppose must be to blame, so in most wars both parties 
have been blameable ; and the wars ought never to have 
taken place at all. Two cases of wars where both parties 
appear to me more or less to blame, I will now give by way 
of example. It sometimes happens, especially in the inter- 
course of a civilized nation with barbarians, that the subjects 
of one nation persist in a course of conduct at variance with 
the laws of the other ; and that the party thus aggrieved takes 
its redress into its own hands and punishes the offenders, sum- 
marily, with over severity perhaps, and sometimes mistaken- 
ly : that is, the individuals punished may in that particular 
case be innocent ; as it has often happened that when soldiers 
fire upon a riotous crowd, some harmless passers by are the 
sufferers, although they had no concern whatever in the riot. 
It cannot be denied that the party originally aggrieved has 
now given some just cause of complaint against itself; yet it 
is monstrous in the original aggressor to prosecute his quarrel 
forthwith by arms, or to insist peremptorily on receiving satis- 
faction for the wrong done to him, without entering into the 
question of the previous and unprovoked wrong which had 
been done by him. For after all, the balance of wrong is 
not, when all things are taken into the account, so much as 
brought to a level : the original debtor is the debtor still ; 
some counter claims he has upon his creditor ; but the bal- 
ance of the account is against him. Yet he goes to war as 
if it were not only in his favour, but as if his adversary had 
suffered no wrong at all, and he had done none. 

The other ease is one of greater difficulty, and has been 
the fruitful parent of wars continued from generation to 
generation. This is where nations suspect each other, and 
the suspicion has in the case of either enough to justify it. 
Thus what one party claims as a security, the other regards 



LECTURE IV 201 

as a fresh aggression ; and so the quarrel goes on mtermi- 
nably. The Punic wars in ancient history are one instance 
of this : the long wars between France and the coalesced 
powers in our own times are another. At a given moment 
in the contest the government on one side may feel sure of 
its own honest intentions, and suspect with justice the hostile 
disposition of its rival. But in all fairness, the previous 
steps of the struggle must be reviewed ; have our predeces- 
sors never acted in such a way as to inspire suspicion justly ? 
We stand in their place, the inheritors of their cause, and the 
suspicions which their conduct occasioned still survive to- 
wards us. Our enemy is dealing insincerely with us, be- 
cause he cannot be persuaded that we mean fairly by him. 
A great evil, and one almost endless, if each party refuses 
to put itself in the other's place, and presses merely the actual 
fact of the moment, that while it is dealing in all sincerity, 
its adversary is meditating only deceit and hostility. In 
such cases I cannot but think that the guilt of the continued 
quarrel must be divided, not equally perhaps, but divided^ 
between both the belligerents. 

And now coming to the mere history of military operations 
themselves, in what manner may a common reader best enter 
into them, and read them with interest ? It is notorious, ] 
believe, that our ordinary notions of wars are very much 
those which we find in the accounts of the Samnite wars ic 
Livy. (8) We remember the great battles, sometimes with 
much particularity ; but they stand in our memory as iso- 
lated events ; we cannot connect them with each other, we 
know not what led to them, nor what was their bearing on 
the fate of the campaign. Sometimes, it is true, this is of no 
great consequence ; for the previous movements were nc 
more than the Homeric — 



202 LECTURE IV. 

the armies maicbed out to meet each other, and the battle 
decided every thing. But in complicated wars it is very 
different. Take for instance the wars of Frederick the 
Great ; we may remember that he was defeated at Kolin, at 
Hochkirchen, and at Cunersdorf ; that he was victorious at 
Rosbach, at Lissa, at Zorndorf, and at Torgau ; but how far 
are we still from comprehending the action of the war, and 
appreciating his extraordinary ability. To do this, a good 
map is essential ; a map which shall exhibit the hills of a 
country, its principal roads, and its most important fortresses. 
To understand the operations of the Seven Years' War, we 
must comprehend the situation of the Prussian dominions 
with respect to those of the allies, and must know also their 
geographical character, as well as that of the countries im- 
mediately adjoining them. We must observe the importance 
of Saxony, as covering Prussia on the side of Austria ; the 
importance of Silesia, as running in deeply within what may 
be called the line of the Austrian frontier, and flanking a 
large part of Bohemia. For these reasons Frederick began 
the war by surprising Saxony, and amidst all his difficulties 
clung resolutely to the possession of Silesia. His vulnerable 
side was on the east towards Russia ; and had the Russian 
power been in any degree such as it became afterwards, he 
would have lost Berlin not once only, but permanently. But 
the Russian armies being better fitted for defence than offence, 
even their gi'eat victory of Cunersdorf was followed by no 
important consequences, and Frederick was able generally 
to leave the defence of his eastern frontiers to his generals^ 
and to devote his own attention to the great struggle witn 
Austria on the side of Saxony and Silesia. 

Connected with the details of military history, and in itself 
in many respects curious, is the history, so far as it can be 
traced, of great roads and fortresses ; for these, like all other 
earthly things, change from age to age, and if we do not 



^ LECTURE 1 /. 203 

Know or Dbseive these changes, the military history of oiig 
period will be almost unintelligible, if judged of according lo 
ihe roads and fortresses of another. For example, there are 
at present three great lines of communication between the 
northwest of Italy and the Rhone : one is the coast road from 
Nice to Marseilles, and Tarascon or Avignon ; another is 
the road over Mont Cenis upon Montmeillan, and so descend- 
ing the valley of the Isere by Grenoble upon Valence ; a 
third is the road so well known to all travellers, from Mont- 
meillan upon Chamberri, and from thence by Les Echelles 
upon Lyons. But in the early part of the sixteenth century, 
I find in the work of an Italian, named Gratarolo, who wrote 
a sort of guide for travellers, that the principal line of com- 
munication between Italy and the Rhone was one which it 
now requires a good map even to trace ; it crossed the Alps 
by the Mont Gen^vre, descended for a certain distance along 
the valley of the Durance, and then struck off to the right, 
and went straight towards Avignon, by a little place called 
Sault, and by Carpentras. The abandonment in many in- 
stances of the line of the Roman roads in Italy is owing, as I 
have been informed, to the extreme insecurity of travelling 
during a long period ; so that according to the description of 
a similar state of things in Scripture, " the highways were 
unoccupied, and the travellers walJted through by-ways." 
Merchants and those who were obliged to go from place to 
place followed by-roads, as nearly parallel as they could 
find them to the line of the great roads ; and when a better 
state of things returned, the by-roads were become so much 
in use, that they remained the ordinary lines of communica- 
tion, and the great roads of the Roman time went to ruin. 
So again with fortresses ; when Charles the Fifth invaded 
Champagne in the sixteenth century, his army was resisted 
by the little town of St. Dizier, which is now perfectly open, 
nnd incapable of stopping an enemy for half an hour ; while 



204 LECTURE IV. • 

ihe fortresses which resisted the Prussians in 1792, Longwy 
and Verdun, seem to have been in Charles the Fifth's daya 
of no consequence whatever. The great Piedmontese for- 
tress at this day is Alessandria, which I think hardly occurs 
in the military history of Piedmont previously to the wars of 
the French revolution. On the other hand, Turin itself, 
which was besieged so elaborately by Marshal Marsin in 
1706, and so ejEfectually relieved by Prince Eugene's victo- 
rious assault on the besiegers' lines, and the citadel of which 
was a fortress of some importance so late as 1799, is now 
wholly an open town, and its ramparts are become a pro- 
menade. 

When speaking of the altered lines of roads, one is natu- 
rally led to think of the roads over great mountain chains, 
of which so many have been newly opened in our own days- 
and a few words on mountain warfare, which has been called 
the poetry of the military art, shall conclude this lecture. 
But by mountain warfare I do not mean the mere attack or 
defence of a mountain pass, such as we read of in the Tyro- 
lese insurrection of 1809 ; but the attack and defence of a 
whole mountain country, comprehending a line perhaps of 
eighty or a hundred miles. You have here almost all the 
elements of hiterest in war met together ; the highest exer- 
cise of skill in. the general in the combination of his opera- 
tions ; the greatest skill and energy in the officers and soldiers 
in overcoming or turning to account the natural difficulties 
of the ground ; and the picturesque and poetical charm of 
the grouping together of art and nature, of the greatest works 
and efforts of man with the highest magnificence of natural 
scenery. One memorable instance of this grand mountain 
warfare was the contest in the Pyrenees in 1813 ; another 
may be found in Napoleon's operations in the Apennines, in 
the beginning of the campaign of 1796, and those in the val- 
ley of the Adige in January 1797 ; a third, and in some r«- 



LECTURE IV. 205 

spects the most striking of all, was the struggle in Switzer- 
land in 1799, when the eastern side of Switzerland was made 
as it were one vast fortress, which the French defended 
against the attacks of the allies. In such warfare, a general 
must bear constantly in mind the whole anatomy of the 
mountains which he is defending or attacking : the geo- 
graphical distance of the several valleys and passes from 
each other, their facilities of lateral communication, their 
exact bearings and windings, as well as the details of their 
natural, features, and resources. He must also conceive the 
disposition of his enemy's army, the force at each particular 
point, and the facilities of massing a large force at any one 
point in a given time. For a blow struck with effect at any 
one spot is felt along the whole line ; and the strongest posi- 
tions are sometimes necessarily abandoned without firing a 
shot, merely because a point has been carried at the distance 
of thirty or forty miles from them, by which the enemy may 
penetrate within their line and threaten their rear. And 
surely the moving forty or fifty thousand men with such pre- 
cision, that marching from many different quarters they may 
be all brought together at a given hour on a given spot, is a 
very magnificent combination, if we consider how many 
points must be embraced at once in the mind, in order to its 
conception, and how many more are essential to its successful 
execution. But lest I should seem here forgetting my own 
caution, and imitating the presumption of Hannibal's sophist, 
I will only refer you to General Mathieu Dumas' History of 
the Campaigns of 1799 and 1800, in which, illustrated as it 
is by its notes, you will find a very clear account of the par- 
ticular contest in Switzerland, and some general remarks on 
mountain warfare, very clear and very interesting. (9) 

The subject is so vast that it would not be easy to exhaust 
it ; but enough has been said perhaps to fulfil my immediate 
object, that of noticing some of the questions and difficulties 



206 LECTURE IV. 

which occur in military history ; and I have lingered long 
enough upon ground on which my right as an unmilitary 
man to enter at all may possibly be questioned. Here then 
I shall end what I have to say with regard to external history • 
it follows that we should penetrate a little deeper, and endea- 
vour to find some clue to guide us through the labyrinth of 
opinions and parties, political and religious, which constitute 
at once the difficulty and the interest of internal history. 



NOTES 



TO 



LECTURE IV. 



Note 1. — Page 183. 

Ik one of the prefaces to his History of Rome, Dr. Arnold wnrites : 
* * " I am well aware of the great difficulty of giving liveliness to 
a narrative which necessarily gets all its facts at second-hand. 
And a writer who has never been engaged in any public transac- 
tions, either of peace or war, must feel this especially. One who 
is himself a statesman and orator, may relate the political contests 
even of remote ages with something of the spirit of a contemporary ; 
for his own experience realizes to him in a great measure the scenes 
and the characters which he is describing. And in like manner a 
soldier or a seaman can enter fully into the great deeds of ancient 
warfare ; for although in outward form ancient battles and sieges 
may differ from those of modern times, yet the genius of the general 
and the courage of the soldier, the call for so many of the highest 
qualities of our nature, which constitutes the enduring moral interest 
of war, are common ilike to all times ; and he who has fought under 
Wellington has been in spirit an eye-witness of the campaigns of 
Hannibal. But a writer whose whole experience has been con- 
fined to private life and to peace, has no link to connect him with 
the actors and great deeds of ancient history, except the feelings of 
our common humanity. He cannot realize civil contests or battles 
with the vividness of a statesman and a soldier ; he can but enter 
into them as a man ; and his general knowledge of human nature, 
his love of great and good actions, his sympathy with virtue, his ab- 
horrence of vice, can alone assist him in making himself as it were 
11 witness of what he attempts to describe. But these even by 



208 NOTES 

themselves will do much ; and if an historian feels as a man and as 
a citizen, there is hope that, however humble his experience, he 
may inspire his readers with something of his own interest in tho 
events of his history." 

History of Rome, vol. ii. Preface 



Note 2.— Page 183. 

" It is curious to observe how readily men mistake accidental 
distinctions for such as are really essential. A lively writer, the 
author of the ' Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau,' ridicules the 
study of what is called ancient history ; and as an instance of its 
uselessness, asks what lessons in the art of war can be derived 
from the insignificant contests which took place before the invention 
of gunpowder. Now it so happens that one who well knew what 
military lessons were instructive, the emperor Napoleon, has se- 
lected out of the whole range of history the campaigns of seven 
generals only, as important to be studied by an officer professionally 
in all their details ; and of these seven three belong to the times of 
Greece and Rome, namely, Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar. See 
Napoleon's ' Melanges Historiques,' tome ii. p. 10." 

Arnold's Thucydides, vol. iii. Preface, p. 20, note 

Note 3.— Page 185. 

When Mentz was taken by the allied army in 1793, the French 
garrison was allowed to march out, without being made prisoners 
of war, and only under a stipulation that they w ere not to serve 
against the allies for a year. The consequence of which was, thai 
these disciplined veterans were afterwards hurried, under the com- 
mand of Kleber, into La Vendee, and against them, as Dr. Arnold 
has observed, the heroism and enthusiasm of the Vendeans, before 
victorious, was quickly found an unequal match. Goethe, who was 
present with the Duke of Brunswick during the siege, has given a 
curious account of the personal appearance of the veterans by whom 
this important fortress of Mayence had been stoutly defended. On 
one occasion, riding over the ground after a bold sortie in the night by 
the besieged garrison, he says, " The sun rose with a dull light, and 



TO LECTURE IV. 209 

vhe sacrifices of tlje night were lying side by side. Our German cui- 
rassiers, men of gigantic stature and well clothed, presented a strango 
contrast with the dwarfish, insignificant-looking, tattered Sanscu- 
lottes." When the garrison surrendered and marched out, he after- 
wards adds, " Never was any thing stranger than the way in which 
they came upon our sight ; a column of Marseillois, all small and 
black-looking, and clad in particoloured rags, came pattering along, 
as if King Edwin had opened his mountain and sent forth liis merry 
host of dwarfs. After these followed troops of a more regular de- 
scription, with serious and dissatisfied visages, with no look how- 
ever of being ashamed or out of heart. But what had the most 
striking appearance was when the chasseurs a cheval rode forward 
in their turn. They had advanced in silence to our station, when 
their band struck up the Marseillaise march. This revolutionary 
Te Deum has, under any circumstances, somewhat of a mournful 
expression, let it be played in ever so quick time, but on this occa- 
sion they gave it a slow movement, and so came slowly along. It 
was an impressive and fearful sight when the horsemen, long, lean 
men, all with a veteran look, rode slowly forward, with faces as 
solemn and mournful as the tones of their music. Individually they 
might have reminded one of Don Quixote, but as a body their ap- 
pearance was such as to inspire awe." " Belagerung von MaintzJ'^ 



Note 4. — Page 187. 

" I never felt more keenly the wish to see the peace between the 
two countries (England and France) perpetual ; never could I be 
more indignant at the folly and wickedness which on both sides of 
the water are trying to rekindle the flames of war. The one effect 
of the last war ought to be to excite in both nations the greatest 
mutual respect. France with the aid of half Europe could not 
conquer England ; England, with the aid of all Europe, never could 
have overcome France, had France been zealous and united in Na- 
poleon's quarrel. When Napoleon saw kings and pri>ces bowing 
before him at Dresden, Wellington was advancing- victoriously in 
Spain; when a million of men in 1815 were invading France, Na- 
poleon engaged for three days with two armies, each singly equal 



210 NOTES 

to his own, and was for two days victorious. Equally and utterly 
false are the follies uttered by silly men of both countries, about 
the certainty of one beating the other. 'Oi; t:6\v Sia<pfp£i avdpmTTOi 
ivd^wTT'yj, is especially applicable here. When Englishmen and 
Frenchmen meet in war, each may know that they will meet in 
the other all a soldier's qualities, skill, activity, and undaunted cour- 
age, with bodies able to do the bidding of the spirit either in action 
or in endurance. England and France may do each other incalcu- 
lable mischief by going to war, both physically and morally ; but 
they can gain for themselves, or hope to gain, nothing. It were an 
accursed wish in either to wdsh to destroy the other, and happily 
the wish would be as utterly vain as it wouJa be wicked." 1840. 

Life and Correspondence, Appendix C, ix. 19 



The allusion, both in the text and in the above extract, to King 
Archidamus, refers to some of the words of cautious counsel he 
gave to his countrymen in the public deliberations held at Sparta 
before the hostilities in the Peloponnesian War — 5roXi5 re Sia<pip£iv ov 

Sel voixtC,£iv avQpWTTOv avdpcoirov, KpdriaTov Si tlvai Zaris iv to7s avayKaiordrois 

KatSeveratj Thucydides, i. 84 ; or in Dr. Arnold's paraphrase — " One 
man is practically much the same as another ; or if there be any 
difference, it is that he who has been taught what is most needful, 
and has never troubled himself with superfluous accomplishments, 
is the best and most valuable." 



General Dumas, in a note in the fourth volume of his " Precis des 
Evenemens Militaircs,''^ alludes to the peculiar vivacity of French 
character as an important element in sustaining the national spirit 
under the depression of military reverses, and gives a pleasant in- 
stance of the expression of such feeling : 

"Al'epoque de la paix de 1762, quand les Anglais parvinrent, 
par les malheurs de la guerre sur le continent, a humilier la marine 
frangaise, Favart, connu seulement par quelques ouvrages drama- 
tiques du genre le plus leger, mais pleins de grace, inspire cede 
fois par cet esprit public recele dans le coeur des Frangais comme 
le feu dans le caillou, fit le couplet suivant, qui merite d'etre con- 
Berve, et ne saurait etre reproduit plus a propos : 



- TO LECTURE IV. 211 

" Le coq fran^ais est le coq de la gloire ; 
Par les revers il n'est point abattu ; 
II chante fort, s'il gagne la victoire ; 
Encor plus fort quand il est bien battu : 
Le coq franc ais est le coq de la gloire ; 
Toujours chanter est sa grande vertxi, 
Est-il imprudent, est-il sage 1 
C'est ce qu'on ne peut d6finir ; 
Mais qui ne perd jamais courage, 
Se rend maitre de Tavenir." 

Dr. Arnold has noticed the resemblance of Athenian and 
French vivacity, in preserving unbroken self-confidence amidst the 
greatest disasters, and that Favart's epigram is almost a paraphrase 
of the language of the Corinthians as applied to the Athenians — 

ova;rin-rou«nj/." Thucydides, book i. 70, note. 



Note 5'.— Page 190. 

In one of the Duke of Wellington's dispatches, dated at St. Jean 
de Luz, 1st Jan., 1814, he remarks to Earl Bathurst, " It is a cu- 
rious circumstance that v/e are the protectors of the property of 
the inhabitants against the plunder of their own armies ; and their 
cattle, property, etc., are driven into our lines for protection." 

The difficulty in preventing plunder was chiefly felt with regard 
to the Spanish and Portuguese troops, who were under violent 
temptation, now they were on French ground, after having witnessed 
such havoc and desolation by pillaging in their own countries. 
The following characteristic letter of Wellington's was written on 
the occasion to the general of the Spanish forces. 

" St. Jean de Z/WZ, 23cJ Decern., 1813, 

" To General Morillo — 

" Before I gave the orders of the th, of which you and the 

officers under your command have made such repeated complaints, 
I warned you repeatedly of the misconduct of your troops, in direct 
disobedience of my orders, which I told you I could not permit ; 
and I desired you to take measures to prevent it. 

" I have sent orders to countermand those which I gave on thu 



212 NOTE? 

18th; but I give you notice that whatever may be the consequence 
I shall repeat those orders, if your troops are not made, by theii 
officers, to conduct themselves as well-disciplined soldiers ought. 

*' I did not lose thousands of men to bring the army under my 
command into the French territory, in order that the soldiers might 
plunder and ill-treat the French peasantry, in positive disobedience 
to my orders ; and I beg that you and your officers will understand 
that I prefer to have a small army, that will obey my orders and 
preserve discipline, to a large one, that is disobedient and undisci- 
plined ; and that if the measures which I am obliged to adopt to 
enforce obedience and good order, occasion the loss of men, and 
the reduction of my force, it is totally indifferent to me ; and the 
fault rests with those who, by the neglect of their duty, suffer theii 
soldiers to commit disorders which must be prejudicial to their 
country. 

" I cannot be satisfied with professions of obedience. My orders 
must be really obeyed, and strictly carried into execution ; and if I 
cannot obtain obedience in one way, I will in another, or I will nt»t 
command the troops which disobey me." 

In a letter to the Portuguese General Freyre, Wellington writes 
in French as characteristic as his English ; * * " pour moi, je 
declare que je ne desire pas un commandement, ni I'union des na- 
tions, si I'un ou I'autre doit etre fonde sur le pillage. J'ai perdu 
20,000 hommes dans cette campagne, et ce n'est pas pour que le 
General Morillo, ni qui que ce soit, puisse venir piller les paysans 
Franpais ; et, ou je commande, je declare hautement que je ne le 
permettrui pas. Si on.veut piller, qu'on nomme un autre a corn 
mander , parceque, moi, je declare que, si On est sous mes ordres, 
il ne faut pas piller. 

" Vous avez des grandes armees en Espagne ; et si on veut 
piller les paysans Fran(jais, on n'a qu'a m'oter le commandement, 
et entrer en France. Je couvrirai I'Espagne centre les malheurs 
qui en seront le resultat ; c'est k dire, que vos armees, quelques 
grandes qu'elles puissent etre, ne pourront pas rester en France 
pendant 15 jours. * * 

" Je pourrais dire quelque chose aussi en justification de ce que 

'ai fait, qui regarderait la politique ; mais j'ai assez dit, et je voua 

repete, qu'i. m'est absolument indifferent que je commande une 



TO LECTURE IV 213 

grande ou une petite armee ; mais que, qu'elle soit grande ou 
Detite, il faut qu'elle m'obeisse, et surtout qiCelle ne pille pas.'''' 

Wellington's 'Dispatches and General Orders,^ 863. 



Note C— Page 192. 

* * " The manner of war, which affords most opportunity for per- 
sonal prowess, and requires most individual exertion, calls forth 
more personal feeling, and, consequently, fiercer passions. How 
much more murderous would battles be, if they were decided by 
the sword and bayonet ; how few prisoners would bo taken, and 
how little mercy shown ! 

" Montesinos. In proof of this, more Englishmen fell at Tow- 
ton, than in any of Marlborough's battles, or at Waterloo. 

" Sir Thomas More. In war, then, it is manifestly better that 
men, in general, should act in masses as machines, than with an 
individual feeling. 

" Montesinos. I remember to have read or heard of a soldier in 
our late war, who was one day told by his officer to take aim when 
he fired, and make sure of his man. ' I cannot do it, sir.' was his 
reply. ' I fire into their ranks, and that does as well ; but to single 
out one among them, and mark him for death, would lie upon my 
mind afterwards.' The man who could feel thus, was worthy of a 
better station than that in which his lot had been assigned. 

" Sir Thomas More. And yet, Montesinos, such a man was 
well placed, if not for present welfare, for his lasting good. A 
soul that can withstand the hearthardening tendencies of a military 
life, is strengthened and elevated by it. In what other station 
could he have attained that quiet dignity of mind, that conscious- 
ness of moral strength, which is possessed by those who, living 
daily in the face of death, live also always in the fear of God]" 

Southey's 'Colloquies,'' vol. 1., p. 210. 

Note 7. — Page 196. 

A detailed and graphic description of the sufferings and horrors 
of the siege of Genoa, is given in Botta's History of Italy, chap- 
ter 19. 



214 NOTES 

* 
Note 8.— Page 201. 

* * " Of the Samnite people we can gain no distinct notions 
whatever. Unknown and unnoticed by the early Greek writers, 
they had been well nigh exterminated before the time of those 
Roman writers whose works have come down to us ; and in the 
Augustan age, nothing survived of them but a miserable remnant, 
retaining no traceable image of the former state of the nation. 
Our knowledge of the Samnites is literally limited to the single 
fact, that they were a brave people, who clung resolutely to threir 
national independence. ** The very story of their wars with Rome, 
having been recorded by no contemporary historian, has been cor- 
rupted, as usual, by the Roman vanity ; and neither the origin of 
the contest, nor its circumstances, nor the terms of the several 
treaties which were made before its final issue, have been related 
truly. 

* * " Every step in the Samnite and Latin wars has been so dis- 
guised by the Roman annalists, that a probable narrative of these 
events can only be given by a free correction of their falsifications. 
The case of Capua applying for aid to Rome against the Samnites, 
was exactly that of Corcyra asking help from Athens against Cor- 
inth. * * So truly is real history a lesson of universal application, 
that we should understand the war between Rome and Samnium far 
better from reading Thucydides' account of the war between Cor- 
inth and Corcyra, t'lan from Livy's corrupted story of the very 
events themselves. 

* * " Livy himself (viii. 40) deplores the want of all contempo- 
rary writers for the times of the Samnite wars, as one great cause 
of the hopeless confusion in which the story of those wars was 

involved." 

History of Rome, vol. ii., chap, xxviii. 

Note 9.— Page 205. 

" On s'etonnera que tant de barrieres, qui passaient pour etre des 
obstacles insurmontables a la marche d'une armee, aient ete forcees, 
e* que la defense opiniatre et tres active d'un nombre de troupes, 
que certainement or etit autrefois juge sura,bondant pour feriuer 



TO LECTURE IV. 215 

tous ces passages, n'aient pas arrete plus long-temps I'armee at- 
taquante. On demandera s'il y avait plus d'ardeur dans I'attaque, 
moins de vigueur et de Constance dans la defense ; si Ton employa 
de nouvelles amies, de nouveaux moyens dans les combats ; si les 
rapports et les applications des manoeuvres des diverses armes aux 
difFerentes natures de pays et de terrain furent changes ] Non, sans 
doute, et tres vraisemblablement Part de la guerre avait dejk atteint, 
sous' tous ces rapports, son plus haut periode. Le Cesar de notre 
^ge, Frederic II., avait laisse peu de decouvertes k faire, ou k per- 
fectionner dans la tactique moderne. 

" Mais a mesure que les combinaisons generales se sont etendues, 
il en a ete des postes les plus forts, et des lieux reputes inexpugna- 
bles dans les pays de montagnes, comme des places dans les pays 
de plaine : si ces postes n'assurent la possession des sommites les 
plus hautes et les plus escarpees, s'ils ne sont la clef des moindres 
interstices dans la chaine, celle des premiers passages ouverts par 
les eaux, et qui, s'agrandissant peu a peu, et s'aplanissant en suivant 
leur cours, donnent I'entree des vallees fertiles et etendues ; ils n'ont 
qu'une importance relative et momentanee. 

" Depuis que les voyageurs ont fraye des sentiers a travers les 
abimes de glaces, depuis que de nouvelles regions ont ete explorees, 
I'art de la guerre, qui s'empare de tout, qui s'accroit de tous les 
progres de I'esprit humain, a fait tenter de nouveaux hasards, a fait 
faire de nouvelles experiences ; et le talent et I'audace militaires 
n'ont pas dd exciter les hommes a des efforts moindres, que ceux 
qu'inspirait I'amour des sciences ou la simple curiosite des voyageurs. 

" Des qu'on a su gravir les cimes glacees des Alpes, et porter 
des corps de troupes et de I'artillerie par des sentiers, a peine 
tentes par les plus intrepides chasseurs, on a bientot forme de 
grands plans d'attaque et de defense, comme la nature avait elle- 
memp lie les aretes et les hauteurs moyennes aux chaines et aux 
masses principales ; on a surpris ses secrets ; on a reconnu son 
ordre immuable jusque dans ses caprices les plus bizarres ; le chaos 
des grandes Alpes a ete debrouille, les cartes topographiques per- 
fectionnees, les moindres details recueillis ; on a figure des reliefs 
avec un art et une precision inconnus jusqu'a nos jours. Cette con- 
aaissance exacte de la grande charpente, de Vosteologie des monta- 
gnes, (si on veut nous permetter cette expression,) a inspire aux 



216 NOTES 

generaux et aux officiers d'etat major des idees plus grandes et 
plus simples. Les communications plus pratiquees ont ete exa- 
minees avec plus d'attention ; enfin, il s'est etabli une nouvelle 
echelle pour les operations dans la guerre de montagnes ; on a ose 
detacher des corps a de grandes distances, pour s'assurer du point 
qui rendait maitre des grands intervalles. 

" Ces avantages furent si bien saisis de part et d'autre dans la 
guerre de Suisse, que les coups portes sur la frontiere de Tyrol et 
des Grisons a trente et quarante lieues des positions centrales des 
armees, etaient ressentis a I'instant, obligeaient k faire des mouve- 
mens, faisaient changer les desseins, comme si ces divisions se- 
parees par tant de difficultes, par tant de retranchemens naturals, 
avaient ete contiguees. 

" Aucun obstacle ne pouvant arreter le mouvement general, du 
moins assez long-temps pour obliger le parti superieur en force a 
se departir du plan simple d'operations, qu'on pourrait appeler le 
plan naturel, et qui consiste a deborder les ailes de son ennemi, 
tourner et ruiner leurs appuis, il en est resulte que, dans la guerre 
de montagnes, la force des postes et des positions ne balance plus 
autant qu'autrefois la superiorite du nombre. 

" Nous pensons que le nouveau systeme de guerre de postes, 
dans les actions generales entre toutes les parties des armees op- 
posees, a rcQu un grand developpement dans la guerre de Suisse, 
et qu'il est aussi utile qu'interessant d'observer, sous ces rapports, 
les succes et les revers, les fautes commises et les traits d'habilete. 
Nous laissons h nos lecteurs le soin d'appliquer ces observations 
aux exemples qui les justifient ; les plus remarquables se trouvent 
dans la rapide invasion du pays des Grisons, dans les operations du 
general Lecourbe, et dans celles des generaux Laudon et Belle- 
garde, que nous avons rapportees ; enfin, dans la premiere retraite 
du general Massena, force de concentrer ses forces sur Zurich, de 
replier sa droite en-dega du Mont Saint-Gothard et des petits can- 
tons, et de ceder a I'Archiduc en moins de quinze jours, presque 
tout le cours du Rhin et la moitie du territoire de la Suisse." 

Bumas : " Precis des Evenemens Militaires," i. eh. 3me. 

*' Comme les habitans des pays montagneux et sauvages sont 
ordinairement les plus courageux, et du moins les plus hardis, parce 



TO LECTURE IV. 217 

^u'ils sont accoutumes a surmonter les obstacles que leur oppose 
v'a^perite du sol, et qu'ils sont forces a des marches penibles, h. 
des travaux souvent perilleux ; on doit remarquer aussi que le 
courage s'exalte dans la guerre des montagnes, le genie semble 
etre plus fecond en ressources, les obstacles irritent ; quand tout 
est difficile, rien ne semble impossible ; le soldat y devient plus 
audacieux, et chaque jour plus entreprenant ; il acquiert aussi' plus 
de Constance et de confiance en sa propre valeur." 

Idem, iii. eh. Sde^ p. 40. 

It is an interesting fact, that it was in this country that this distin- 
guished military historian and soldier. General Mathieu Dumas, had 
ills early service. He came when quite a young man, with the French 
iroops to the United States, as one of the aids of Count Rocham- 
beau, in 1780, and continued in the country till after the surrender 
of Yorktown, at w^hich he was present. He has left " Recollec- 
tions" of his life, which describe his service in America, the French 
revolutionary period, and his service under the French Empire. 
The more elaborate work, on which his reputation chiefly rests, is 
the '^Precis des Evenemens Militaires, ou Essais Historiques sur les 
Campagnes de 1799 a 1814." It is the work to which Dr. Arnold 
refers ; it was completed down to the year 1807, in nineteen vol- 
umes. It sustains, I am informed, a high character as a military 
authority, and I can well believe that it is written in an admirable 
spirit, and with the genuine candour of an old soldier, well versed 
in the science of his profession, when I meet, in the preface, with such 
reflections as these, after an observation on the military pedantry 
of judging by a too rigid application of the principles of warfare : 
' La critique austere et tranchante n'est pas toujours la plus in- 
structive. Sans negliger de faire remarquer I'imprevoyance, la 
temerite, les faux calculs punis par des revers merites, je m ^. suis, 
je I'avoue, attache davantage a faire ressortir les exempleis ccn- 
traires, ceux ou. le general n'a pas du seulement la victoire aux 
fautes de son adversaire, mais bien plutot k ses bonnes dispositions, 
k I'intelligence et k I'energie de ses officiers et de ses soldats, ne 
laissant a la fortune que les chances qu'on ne pent garantir contre 



ses caprices ' 



19 



LECTURE Y. 



1 PIIOPOSED that in the present lecture we should approach 
to the consideration of the internal history of the last three 
hundred or three hundred and forty years which have 
elapsed since the close of the middle ages. It is not with- 
out some peculiar apprehensions that I enter upon this part 
of my subject. Its difficulties are so great that I cannot hope 
to do more than partially remove them ; and still more, when 
we come to an analysis of opinions and parties, it is scarcely 
possible to avoid expressing, or at least implying some judg- 
ments of my own, which may be at variance with the judg- 
ments of many of my hearers. Yet with a full sense of all 
these impediments in my way, I yet feel that I must proceed, 
and that to turn aside from the straightforward road, would 
be an unworthy shrinking from one of the m.ost important 
pa rts of my duty. For, as I said at the beginning, any thing 
oi the nature of a calm analysis of that on which we have 
been accustomed to feel much more than to think, cannot but 
be useful to us. Nor will it be the least valuable part of it 
that it should teach us to disentangle principles first from 
parties, and again from one another ; first of all, as showing 
how imperfectly all parties represent their own principles, 
and then, how the principles themselves are a mingled tissue, 
the good and evil being sometimes combined together ; and 
practically, that which under some circumstances was good 
or evil, changing under difierent circumstances, and becom- 
ing the opposite. 

Now here, at the outset of pur inquiry, 1 must agahi dwell 



220 LECTURE V, 

for a moment on our peculiar advantages, in this place, ir 
being made so familiar with the histories of Greece and of 
Rome. For in those histories is involved a great part of our 
own : they contain a view of our own society, only some- 
what simplified, as befits an earlier and introductory study. 
And our familiarity with their details will be convenient en 
the present occasion, because they will furnish us with 
many illustrations familiar already to all my hearers. Be- 
sides this, he who has studied Thucydides and Tacitus, and 
has added to them, as so many of us have done, a familiar 
acquaintance with Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, has already 
heard the masters of political wisdom, and will have derived 
from them some general rules to assist him in making hia 
way through the thicket of modern history. (1) 

When we surveyed the external history of the last three 
centuries, we found that there were at different times differ- 
ent centres of action ; that at one time Austria was this cen- 
tre, at another Spain, and at another France : so that if one 
were asked, quite generally, what was Europe doing exter- 
nally at such or such a period, it might be answered, that it 
was engaged in favouring or in resisting one or other of these 
great powers. Now if we ask at any given period, what 
Europe was doing internally, can we give an answer equally 
simple ? Has there been any principle predominant with 
respect to internal history, as successive nations have been 
in external matters, and has the advancing or putting down 
this principle been the great business of the mind of Europe, 
as the supporting or opposing Austrian or French dominion 
has been the business of her external policy and action ? 

Now, for the convenience of division, and as an aid to our 
sxamination, we may say perhaps that there was : and we 
may divide the three last centuries into two periods, the first 
extending from 1500 to the middle of the seventeenth centu- 
ry, andnhe second ^oing on from 1650 or 1660 to nearly our 



LECTURE V. 221 

own times. And quite generally, we might answer, that in 
the first of these periods Europe was engaged in maintaining 
or opposing the protestant reformation ; in the second, in 
maintaining or opposing a reformation, or to use a more neu- 
tral word, an alteration in matters political. Such a division, 
and such a view of each of the two parts of the division, 
would be allowable and just, I think, if rdade for the mere 
purpose of assisting our studies, while we were fully aware 
of its incompleteness. But if we believed it to be altogether 
correct, it would be sadly misleading ; for in realitv more 
than one principle has been contended for at one time : and 
what We call the protestant reformation, is itself a complex 
thing, embracing a great many points, theological, moral, and 
political : and these points may not have been all pressed by 
the same persons, nor at the same time ; and political ref- 
ormation also is very variously understood ; some wishing 
for greater changes, others for less; and the points most pas-. 
sionately desired by some, being to others almost indifTerent, 
or it may be, even objectionable. So that it becomes essen- 
tial to carry our analysis a little farther, and to show^ in this 
way what a complicated subject we have to deal with. 

Let us suppose for an instant that the whole struggle which 
lias occupied the internal history of modern Europe, has beea 
a political one : we will take nothing more into the account 
than those questions which are ordinarily called political- 
No w, then, what is the real political question which is at the 
bottom of all others, or in other words, what is the principle 
of all political divisions ? Shall we say that it is this, — 
whether political power shall be vested in a greater or less 
number of hands, the old Greek question, in short, as to the 
ascendency of the many or the few ? Accordingly, they 
who take one side of this question, which we call the popu- 
lar side, should advocate, we will say, the communication of 
political power as widely as possible ; those who take the 



222 LECTURE V. 

anti-popular side, should wish it to be confined only to a 
few ? A complete democracy would appear to be the con- 
summation of the wishes of the former, a simple monarchy 
would most answer the views of the latter. And thus, if the 
contest be b&tween a republic and an individual aiming al 
monarchy, men who espouse the popular party would wish 
well to the republic, their opponents would favour the at- 
tempt at monarchy. Accordingly, in the greatest heat of the 
French revolution, this was the view taken of the civil wars 
of Rome ; and the popular party in France revered the 
memory, and on all occasions magnified the names of Cato 
and Brutus as true republicans, who were upholding the 
cause of liberty against a tyrant. Yet it is certain that this 
view was quite fallacious ; that Cato and Brutus belonged 
not to the popular party at Rome, but to the aristocratical j 
they belonged to that party which had steadily opposed the 
agrarian laws, and the communication of the Roman fran- 
chise to the allies ; to the party jvhich had destroyed the 
Gracchi, and had recovered its ascendency through the pro- 
scriptions of Sylla. And it is no less certain that Csesar 
was supported by the popular party ; and that when he 
marched into Italy at the beginning of the civil war, his pre- 
text was, that he was come to uphold the tribunician power, 
and, in point of fact, the mas« of the inhabitants of Italy re- 
garded him with favour. 

Here, then, the opposition of a republic to an individual 
aiming at monarchy, is not the opposition of a popular party 
to an antipopuliir one, but exactly the reverse. Again, a 
similar mistake has been committed with regard to parties in 
Carthage. Dr. Priestley, a most strenuous advocate of pop- 
ular principles, in his Lectures on History, sympathizes en- 
tirely with Hanno's opposition to Hannibal ; he is afraid that 
Hannibal's standing army might have overthrown the liber- 
ties of Carthage. Yet nothing is more certain than thaj 



LECTURE V 223 

Elanno belonged to the high aristocratical party, that same 
party which never forgave Hannibal for his attempt to lessen 
the powers of their exclusive courts of judicature. So that 
it is very possible that, judging of political parties merely by 
tlieir advocating the power of a greater or smaller number, 
we should estimate them quite erroneously. 

Again, what is at the bottom of our preference of what is 
called the popular cause, or of the antipopular ? Do we 
rest in the simple fact of the supreme power being vested in 
more hands or in fewer ? or do we value this fact only as a 
means to some farther end, such as the liberty and happiness 
of the several individuals of the commonwealth ? Do we, in 
short, most value political equality, or the absence of restraint 
from us as individuals ? It is manifest that as we value the 
one or the othei% our estimate of a pure democracy may 
greatly differ. If our great object be equality, then the equal 
enjoyment of political rights and honours by all will seem to 
us the perfection of government : if the absence of restraint 
on individuals be what we most desire, then we may com- 
plain of the tyranny of a majority, of a severe system of 
sumptuary laws, of hindrances thrown in the way of our un- 
limited accumulation of property, or of our absolute disposal 
of it, whether by gift or by will. (2) 

Yet again, taking the mere ascendency of the many or the 
few to be our object, without looking any farther, yet there 
arises a most important question, how many we comprehend 
in our division of many and few. Do we mean the many 
and the few of all the human beings within our territory, or 
of all the freemen, or of all the sovereign state, as opposed to 
iti provinces, or of all the full citizens, as opposed to half- 
citizens and sojourners ? According as we mean either the 
one or the other, the same party may be popular or antipop- 
ular : Are the southern states of the North American union, 
then, to be regarded as democratical or as oligarchical ? Ir, 



S24 LECTURE V. 

the old constitution of Switzerland, what was the canton of 
Uri, as we regard it either with or without its Italian baili. 
wicks ? In Spanish America what would have been a Creole 
democracy, as we either forgot or remembered the existence 
of the men of colour ? So that our very .principle of the 
mere ascendency of the few or the many becomes complica- 
ted ; and we very often regard a government as populai 
when it might with justice, in another respect, be called an- 
lipopular. 

Thus regarding the contests of Europe simply in a politi- 
cal light, and as they affect one single political question, — • 
that of the ascendency of the many or the few, — we do not 
find it easy to judge of them. Let us carry this on a little 
farther. Say that we do not regard the mere m^achinery of 
governments, but their results ; we value that most which is 
best administered, and most promotes the good of the nation ; 
our views are not so much popular as liberal. Have we ar- 
rived, therefore, at a greater simplification of the question ? 
Shall we, as liberal men, agree in regarding the same gov- 
ernment as deserving of our support or our opposition ? 
Scarcely, I think, unless we are first agreed as to what the 
good of the nation is. The ancient commonwealths, for the 
most part, discouraged trade and manufactures as compared 
Mdth agriculture. Were these governments promoting the 
public good, or no ? Other nations have followed a different 
course ; have encouraged trade and rejoiced in the growing 
wealth and comforts of their people.- These, in their turn, 
are denounced by the principles and practice of others, who 
dread above all things the introduction of luxury. Again, 
we attach great importance to the cultivation of art and sci- 
t'nce ; to all humanizing amusements ; music, the theatre, 
dancing, &c. But when Lavoisier pleaded for his life to the 
French government of 1793, he was told that the republic 
had no need of chemists ; (3) the Roman senate expelled the 



LECTURE V, 225 

, rhetoricians from Rome : the early government of the state 
of Connecticut, one of the freest of commonwealths, would 
tolerate no public amusements, Iccist of all the theatre. 1 
might instance other differences in matters of a still higher 
character; as, for example, with regard to the expediency 
of a severe penal code or a mild one ; to the establishment 
of one religion, or the extending equal favour to all. We 
see that the good government of one man is the bad govern 
ment of another ; the best results, according to one man's 
estimate, are in the eyes of his neighbour the most to be dep- 
recated. 

Now all these different views are found in connection with 
different views on questions purely political ; so that the very 
same party may in some respects advocate what we approve 
of, and in others follow what we most dislike ; and farther, 
it may often act inconsistently with itself, and pursue its 
principles, thus mingled as they are, imperfectly, or even 
may seem to act at variance with them. What, then, are 
we to judge of it, when we are studying past history ; or 
how should we have to act, if a similar party were to exist 
in our own generation ? 

Such, we see, are the difficulties of our subject ; and to 
illustrate them still farther, 1 will name one or two instances 
in which men may seem to have mistaken their own natural 
side, owing to the complicated character of actual parties ; 
and from their keen perception of some one point, either as 
loving it or abhorring it, have for its sake renounced much 
that was congenial, or joined much that was unsuited to 
them. This was the case, I think, with the historian Hume, 
A man of his exceedingly inquiring and unrestrained mind, 
living in the midst of the eighteenth century, might have 
been expected to have espoused what is called the popular 
side in the great questions of English history, the side, in 
\ater language, of the movement. Yet we know that Hume'& 



Z26 LECTURE V. 

leaning is the othei •vay. Accidental causes may pcrhapg 
have contributed to this; the prejudice of an ingenious mmd 
against the opinions which he found most prevalent around 
him ; the resistance of a restless mind to the powers that be, 
as natural as implicit acquiescence in them is to an indolent 
mind. But the main cause apparently is to be sought in hia 
abhorrence of puritanism, alike repugnant to him in its good 
and its evil. His subtle and active mind could not bear its 
narrowness and bigotry, his careless and epicurean temper 
had no sympathy with its earnestness and devotion. The 
popular cause in our great civil contests was in his eyes the 
cause of fanaticism ; and where he saw fanaticism, he saw 
that from which his whole nature recoiled, as the greatest of 
all conceivable evils. (4) 

I have spoken of the popular party in our great civil con- 
test as being, in modern language, the party of the move- 
ment. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that a popular 
party and a movement party are always synonymous. A 
movement party is a very indefinite expression, applicable 
equally to very different things. It includes equally those 
who move with a clearly apprehended object, aware of the 
evil which they are leaving, and of the good towards which 
they are tending ; and those who move from an impulse of 
intolerable suffering in their actual state, but are going they 
know not whither ; and those who would move from mere 
restlessness ; and those, lastly, who move as the instruments 
of a power which they serve unconsciously, altering the state 
of the world while they are thinking only of some object of 
personal ambition. In this latter sense, Philip of Macedon 
belonged to the party of the movement, while Demosthenes 
ivould have kept Greece in her old relations. We see, in 
this last instance, the popular party and the movement party 
directly opposed to one another, accidentally, however, aa 
their coincidence also is accidental. We cannot but see that 



LECTURE V. 227 

tlii3 change which Philip wrought, caring only for his personal 
objects, was in fact a.i onward step in the scheme of God's 
providence, involving, as it did, that great spread of the 
Greek race and language over Asia, which was to serve 
such high purposes hereafter. To this Demosthenes was op- 
posed ; his object being only to maintain the old indepen- 
dence of Greece, and the old liberty and glory of Athens. (5) 
A hundred years earlier, Pericles, heading the same political 
party, if we look only to the political relations of Athens 
abroad and at home, had also headed the narty of the move- 
ment ; new dominion, new wealth, new glory, new arts, and 
a new philosophy, ewery thing in Pericles and his adminis- 
tration was a going onward from what had existed before. (6) 
So again, to take our examples from modern times, the great 
religious movement in England at the Reformation, was quite 
unconnected with popular principles in politics ; and the same 
was the case in France in the wars of the League. The 
popular party in France, so far as either of the contending 
parties deserved that name, was opposed to Henry the Fourth, 
and in favour of the house of Guise. The burghers of Paris 
were as zealously attached to the Holy Catholic League as 
those of London, sixty years later, were devoted to the Sol- 
emn League and Covenant. The great movement, there- 
fore, of the world is often wholly unconnected with the 
relations of the popular and antipopular parties in any one 
particular state, — it may be favoured or resisted by either of 
them. 

Farther still, the mere change of time and circumstances 
may alter the character of the same party, without any 
change on its own part : its triumph may be at one time an 
evil, and at another time a good. This is owing to a truth 
which should never be forgotten in all political inquiries, that 
government is wholly relative ; and that there is and can be 
no such thing as the best government absolutely, suited to 



228 LECTURE V. 

all periods and to all countries. It is a fatal error in all })a- 
litical questions to mistake the clock ; to fancy that it is still 
forenoon, when the sun is westering ; that it is early morn- 
ing, when the sun has already mounted high in the heavens. 
No instance of this importance of reading the clock aright 
can be more instructive, than the great quarrel ordinarily 
known as that of the Guelfs and Ghibelins. I may remind 
you that these were respectively the parties which embraced 
the papal and the imperial cause, in the struggle between 
these two powers hi Italy and Germany, fi\:/m the eleventh 
century onwards to the fourteenth. Here, as in all other 
actual contests, a great variety of principles, and passions, 
and instincts, so to speak, were intermingled ; we must not 
suppose that it was any thing like a pure struggle on v/hat 
may be called the distinguishing principle of the Guelf oi 
Ghibelin cause. But the principle in itself was this : wheth- 
er the papal or the imperial, in other words, the sacerdotal or 
the regal power, was to b.e accounted the greater. Now con- 
ceive the papal power to be the representative of what is 
moral and spiritual, and the imperial power to represent only 
what is external and physical ; conceive the first to express 
the ideas of responsibility to God and paternal care and 
guidance, while the other was the mere embodying of selfish 
might, like the old Greek tyrannies ; (7) and who can do 
other than wisli success to the papal cause ? who can help 
being with all his heart a Guelf ? But in the early part of 
the struggle, this was to a great degree the state of it ; the 
pope stood in the place of the church, the emperor was a 
merely worldly despot, corrupt and arbitrary. (8) But con- 
ceive, on the other hand, the papacy to become the represent- 
ative of superstition and of spiritual tyranny, while the 
imperial power was the expression and voice of law ; that 
the emperor stood in the place of the church, and the pope 
was the mere priest, the church's worst enemy ; and this was 



LECTURE V. 229 

actually the form which the contest between the sacerdotal 
and regal powers assumed at a later period ; then our sym- 
pathies are changed, and we become no less zealously Ghib- 
elin than we before were Guelf. Now, so far at least as the 
papal power was concerned, the change was not in it, but in 
outward circumstances. In the beginning of the dispute, the 
papal claims were no less excessive than they became after- 
wards ; all the notions of priestly power were to be found in. 
them, if not fully developed, yet virtually. But these claims 
are harmless ,when the church is asleep or inactive, except 
so far as they tend to prolong the sleep and inactivity. Set- 
ting aside this consideration, and supposing a state of igno- 
rance and torpor not produced by the papacy, and likely to 
exist for a long time to come from other causes, independent 
of the papacy's control, and then the papal dominion may be 
no more than the natural and lawful authority of mature age 
over childhood,, of the teacher over him who needs to be 
taught, of those who understand what Christianity is, over 
those who, professing to be Christians, yet know not what 
their principles are. But so soon as the child grew up into 
the man, that the sleeper was awakened, the inactive roused, 
the Christian taught to know his privileges and his duties — 
then the church being competent to do its own work, the 
claim of the pope to stand in its place became impertinent ; 
and when that claim was urged as one of divine right, for all 
times and circumstances, and men were required to acknow- 
ledge its validity, then having become as useless and mis- 
chievous practically, as it was and always had been false 
theoretically, it was rejected as it deserved to be, and was 
considered amongst the greatest obstacles to truth and to 
goodness. 

This inattention to altered circumstances, which would 
make us be Guelfs in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries 
Decause the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or 



230 LECTURE V. 

twelfth, is a fault of most universal application in all political 
questions, and is often most seriously mischievous. It is 
deeply seated in human nature, being in fact no other than 
an exemplification of the force of habit. It is like the cas(^ 
of a settler landing in a country overrun with wood and un- 
drained, and visited therefore by excessive falls of rain. The 
evil of wet, and damp, and closeness is besetting him on 
every side ; he clears away the woods, and he drains his 
land, and he by doing so mends both his climate and his own 
condition. Encouraged by his success he perseveres in his 
system ; clearing a country is with him synonymous with 
making it fertile and habitable; and he levels or rather sets 
fire to his forests without mercy. Meanwhile the tide is 
turned without his observing it ; he has already cleared 
enough, and every additional clearance is a mischief; damp 
and wet are no longer the evils most to be dreaded, but ex- 
cessive drought. The rains do not fall in sufficient quantity ; 
the springs become low, the rivers become less and less fitted 
for navigation. Yet habit blinds him for a lonsf while to the 
real state of the case ; and he continues to encourage a 
coming mischief in his dread of one that is become obsolete. 
We have been long making progress on our present tack, yet 
if we do not go about now, we shall run ashore. Considei 
the popular feeling at this moment against capital punish- 
ments ; what is it but continuing to burn the woods, when 
the country actually wants shade and moisture. Year after 
year men talked of the severity of the penal code, and strug- 
gled against it in vain. The feeling became stronger and 
stronger, and at last effected all and more than all which it 
had at first vainly demanded ; yet still from mere habit it 
pursues its course, no longer to the restraining of legal cruelty, 
but to the injury of innocence and the encouragement of 
»rime, and encouraging that worse evil, a sympathy with 
wickedness justly punished, rather than with the law, whetliei 



LECTURE V. 231 

of God or man, unjustly violated. (9) So men have con. 
tinued to cry out against the power of the crown after the 
crown had been shackled hand and foot ; and to express the 
greatest dread of popular violence, long after that violence waa 
exhausted, and the antipopular party was not only rallied, 
but had turned the tide of battle, and was victoriously pressing 
upon its enemy. (10) 

I am not afraid after having goiie thus far, to mention one 
consideration more, which, however over nice it may seem 
to some, appears to me really deserving to be taken into ac- 
count. I mean that although the danger from any party in 
our own particular contest may seem to be at an end, and our 
alarms are beginning to be transferred to the opposite party, 
yet it is an important modification of the case, if in other 
countries the party which with us has just ceased to be for- 
midable is still entirely predominant, and no opposition to it 
seems to be in existence. This would seem to show that the 
main current of our times is still setting in that direction, and 
that the danger is still where we at first apprehended it ; 
although in our own particular country, a local cross-current 
may seem to indicate the contrary. For example, any ex- 
cesses of t')s popular party in England in 1642 and the sub- 
sequent years, were much less dangerous, because the same 
party in other parts of Europe was so completely powerless • 
whereas in later years the triumph, first of the Americans, 
and afterwards of the French Revolution, would make an 
essential difference in the strength of popular principles in 
the world generally, and therefore would make their excess 
in any one particular country more really formidable. 

If we take into consideration all that has been hitherto 
said, and remember besides how much national questions 
have been mixed up with those of a political or religious 
character, to say nothing of commercial or economical in- 
terests, or of the anomalies of individual caprice or passion. 



832 LECTURE V. 

we shall have some notion of the difficulty of our task U 
analyze the iLternal history of the last three centuries. And 
I have said nothing of philosophy, and nothing of religion, 
both of which have been very influential causes of action, 
and thus tend to complicate the subject still farther. Let us 
now see how far it is possible to separate a little this per- 
plexed mass, and to arrive at some distinct views of the 
course of events and of opinions. 

In order to do this, the most effectual way perhaps will be to 
select some one particular country, and make its internal his-, 
tory the subject of an analysis. But I should wish it to be 
understood that I am offering rather a specimen of the method 
to be pursued in analyzing history, than pretending to execute 
the analysis completely. In fact if there were no other ob- 
stacles in the way of such a complete work, the limits of these 
lectures would alone render it impracticable. And therefore 
if any of my hearers notice great omissions in the following 
sketch, he may suppose, at least in many instances, that they 
are made advisedly, that I am not attempting a complete his- 
torical view, but only exhibiting, in some very familiar in- 
stances, what I believe to be the method of studying internal 
history to the greatest advantage. 

Availing myself then of the division which I have noticed 
above, and assuming for our present purposes that the three 
last centuries may be divided into two periods, the one of re- 
ligious, the other of political movement, I will now endeavour 
to offer a specimen of the analysis of internal history, taking 
for my subject these two periods successively, as far as re- 
gards our own country ; and beginning therefore with the 
sixteenth century. 

It does not appear to me that there was at the beginning 
of this century any thing in England which deserves to be 
called either a political or a religious party. There were 
3hanges at work no doubt, social changes going on imper 



LECTURE V. 233 

ceptibly which prepared the way for the development of par- 
ties hereafter ; but the partie^ themselves were not yet in 
existence. There was no party to assert the right of any 
rival claimant to the throne, there was no question stirrin_g 
between the king and the nobility, or between the king and 
the commons, or between the nobility and commons. A more 
tranquil state of things politically could not well be found. 

So it was also religiously. The great schism of the rival 
popes had been long settled, and WicklifFe's doctrines, al- 
though they could never have become extinct, did not gain 
strength visibly ; and those who held them were in no condi- 
tion to form a party against the prevailing church doctrines 
or government. We start therefore upon our inquiry, with 
the whole matter of it before us, nothing of it has been al- 
ready begun. 

Neither do I think that any thing properly to be called a 
party showed itself till the reign of Elizabeth. I do not 
mean to deny that Cranmer and Gardiner, the Seymours and 
the Howards, may have had their adherents and their ene- 
mies, principally amongst those who were attached on the 
one hand to the Reformation, and on the other hand to the 
system which was being reformed. So again there were 
ii;aurrections both in Henry the Eighth's reign and in Ed- 
ward the Sixth's against the measures of the government, 
when it was assailing the ancient system. But none of these 
things seem to have had sufficient consistence or permanence 
to entitle them to the name of national parties. At any rate 
the reign of Elizabeth witnessed them in a much more formed 
state, and here therefore we will consider them. 

Elizabeth ascended the throne in the year 1558 ; Charles 
the Fifth had died about two months before her accession ; 
Henry the Second was still reigning. Paul the Fourth, 
John Peter Caraffa, had been pope for the last three years: 
the Reformation, dating from Luther's first preaching, was 



234 LECTURE V. 

now about forty years old : the council of Trent was sus- 
pended ; its third and final '[)eriod began under Pius the 
Fourth, four years later. The Reformation after having 
been established fully in England under Edward the Sixth, 
and again completely overthrown under Mary, was now 
once more triumphant. But its friends were divided anaongst 
themselves, and we can now trace two active and visible 
parties in England, with a third no longer combating in its 
own name in the front of the battle, but still powerful, and 
transferring some of its principles to one of the other two 
parties, whose triumph might possibly lead the way here- 
after to its own. These three parties were the favourers of 
the church system as actually established, those who wished 
to reform it still more, and those who wished to undo what 
had been done to it already. But the Roman Catholics, who 
formed this last party, could not, as I have said, fight their 
battle openly, as both the government and the mass of the 
nation were against them. 

It does not appear that these parties had as yet assumed a 
directly political form. They as yet involved no struggle 
between the crown and the parliament, or between the gov- 
ernment and the nation. Of course they contained in them 
certain political tendencies, which were afterwards developed 
sufficiently ; but they were as yet, in their form, of a religious, 
or at least of an ecclesiastical character. And like all other 
parties they represented each no one single principle, but 
several ; and mixed with principles, a variety of interests 
and passions besides. 

1st. The friends or supporters of the existing church sys- 
tem, however different in other respects, agreed in one great 
point ; namely, in the exclusion of the papal power, and in 
asserting the national independence in things ecclesiastical 
and spiritual. Farther, they agreed in the main in regarding 
tlie national voice, whose independence they maintained, as 



LECTURE V. ■ 235 

expressed by the national sovereign, in recognising the king 
or queen as the liead of the church. In other matters they 
differed greatly, as was unavoidable; for thus far the most 
worldly men and the most religious might go along with each 
other, although in other things most at variance. It may 
be safely said that this point of the national religious inde- 
pendence, expressed by the royal supremacy, was the main 
bond Vi^hich held Elizabeth to the Reformation ; not that she 
was averse to it religiously, at least in its principal points ; 
but that this threw her at once into its arms : she preferred 
that system which made her a queen altogether, to that which 
subjected her, in the most important of all human concerns, 
to the authority of an Italian priest. Elizabeth's own views 
were shared by a large portion of her people ; they utterly 
abhorred the papal supremacy, with an English feeling quite 
as much as a religious one ; it is not clear that they would 
have abhorred it equally had the papal see been removed for- 
ever from Rome to Canterbury, and the pope been necessarily 
an Englishman. But in proportion as religious questions had 
come to engage men's minds more generally, so they became 
desirous to have the power of deciding them for themselves. 
And no doubt mere political feelings had a great deal to do 
with the matter ; the papacy was a government constantly 
varying in its foreign policy ; French influence was at one 
time predominant at Rome, Spanish influence at another; 
but English influence was never powerful ; and Englishmen 
did not wish to be in any degree subject to an authority 
which might be acting in the interests of their rivals or their 
enemies. 

Again, the existing church system as opposed to the old 
one was upheld by a great number of persons throughout the 
country, because it was the relaxation of an irksome control. 
The Roman Catholic system, when enforced, does undoubt- 
edly interfere considerably with men's libeity of thought and 



236 LECTURE V. 

action. Its ritual and ceremonial ordinances are vei^ nu 
merous, and may be compared to the minute details of mili- 
tary discipline in the bondage which they are felt to impose. 
Its requiring auricular confession, and its assumed right of 
exercising over men's minds and studies the same absolute 
authority which a parent claims over the mind and pursuits 
of a young child, were unendurable at a moment when the 
burst of mental vigour in England was so extraordinary as 
it was in the reign of queen Elizabeth. Let any man read 
Shakespeare and the other great dramatists of the period, and 
he will observe nothino; more remarkable in them than theii 
extreme freedom, I may almost call it, their license of 
thought. These dramatists were entirely men of the people ; 
and other writers of the day belonging to the same class, show 
no less the same tendency. Men of various ranks and degrees, 
from the highest nobility to the humblest of that middle class 
which was now daily growing in numbers and importance, 
all loving their liberty of thought and action in their several 
ways, were averse to the return of a system which, when- 
ever it was enforced, as it now seemed likely to be, exer- 
cised a constant control over both. (11) 

To be classed in the same party, and yet very different in 
themselves from the division of it just noticed, were all those 
who out of sincere and conscientious feeling concurred hearti- 
ly in the church system as it was established in the reign of 
Edward the Sixth, and from various motives were disposed to 
rest contented in it. Some thinking it a matter of wisdom 
and charity not to go farther from the old system than was 
necessary ; some also, and this is a natural feeling in the 
leaders of a reforming party, esteeming very much wliat 
they had done already, and yielding to that desire of our 
nature which after work well done longs to rest. And these 
took it ill when they were told to think nothing accomplished, 
till Ihey should have accomplished every thing ; it seemed 



LECTUHE v« 237 

like an*unthankful disparagement of their past efforts, to be 
requiring of them immediately to exert themselves farther. 
Nor was it possible for the bishops and others of the high 
clergy to escape the influence of professional feelings; which 
would plead in favour of a system which, however much it 
subjected them to the control of the crown, gave them much 
authority and dignity with respect to the inferior clergy and 
to the laity. 

2dly. Distinct from and soon to be strongly opposed to this 
first party, was the party which wished to carry the Refor- 
mation farther ; that party which is commonly known by the 
name of Puritan. This was composed of less different ele- 
ments than the church party, from the nature of the case ; 
although in it too differences were in process of time observ- 
able. But at first 4t contained only those who in their main 
principle were agreed : they deemed the old church system 
to be utterly bad, so bad as to have defiled whatever it had 
touched, even things in their own nature indifferent; they 
wished therefore to reform it utterly, and abandoning every 
thing of man's device, to adopt nothing either in church doc- 
trine or discipline which was not authorized directly by God's 
word. Being men of exceeding zeal and of a most stirring 
nature, they were anxious to do the work effectually, .and 
would listen to no considerations which pleaded for compro- 
mise or for delay. 

Familiarity with and love of the foreign protestant churches 
on the one hand, especially that of Geneva ; an extreme 
veneration for what they found in the letter of the Scripture^ 
and probably also certain notions of good and free govern- 
ment which the actual state of the English monarchy could 
not but shock ; disposed the Puritans to regard with dislike 
the principle of the royal supremacy. They saw that prac 
tically the arbitrary power, which they abhorred in the pope 
had been transferred in the lump to the queen ; they saw no 



238 LECTURE V. 

such thing in the Christian church, as exhibited in the Scrip- 
tures; neither could they find there, as they thought, any 
like the English episcopacy and hierarchy ; but the govern- 
ment of the church vested in a body of elders, and these not 
all members of the order of the clergy. What they thought 
they found in the Scriptures they believed to be of divine 
authority, not only when it was first instituted, but forever ; 
and they wished therefore to substitute for the royal suprem- 
acy and hierarchy of the existing English church, that 
church government which alone, as they were persuaded, 
was ordained by God himself. 

Furthermore, as men to whom religious questions were a 
great reality, and a matter of the deepest personal interest, 
they were in the highest degree impatient of all which 
seemed to them formalism. They conceived that amidst the 
prevailing ignorance and indifference on religious matters, a 
liturgical service was of much less consequence than a stir- 
ring preaching of the gospel ; they complained, therefore, of 
the evil of an unpreaching ministry ; for the mass of the 
clergy were so ignorant that they were unable, or could not 
be trusted to preach, and the homilies had been set forth by 
authority, to remedy, as far as might be, this defect. The 
puritans said that the liturgy might become a mere form, 
both in the minister and in the congregation, if it were not 
accompanied by an effective preaching ; the minister, in 
their view, was not to be the mere instrument of the church 
services, but to be useful to the people by his own personal 
gifts ; an ignorant or utterly vicious man might read a form 
prescribed by others ; they wanted a man who should be. 
lieve, and must therefore speak, not the words of others, but 
those of his own convictions and affections. 

There was in the principles of the puritans nothing of 
philosophy, either in the good sense of the word or the bad. 
A.nd it is also most unjust to charge them with irreverence oi 



LECTURE V. 239 

want of humility. They received the Scriptures as God's 
word, and they followed them implicitly. Neither do they 
seem chargeable with establishing nice distinctions in order 
to evade their obvious meaning ; their fault seems lather to 
have lain in the other extreme ; they acquiesced in the ob- 
vious and literal meaning too unhesitatingly. Nor yet were 
they wanting in respect for all human authority, as trusting 
in their own wisdom and piety only. On the contrary, the 
decisions of the "earlier church with respect to the great 
Christian doctrines, they received without questioning : they 
by no means took the Scriptures into their hands, and sat 
down to make a new creed of their own out of them. They 
disregarded the church only where the church departed from 
the obvious sense of Scripture ; I do not say the true sense, 
but the obvious one. The difference as to their moral char- 
acter is considerable : because he who maintains another than 
the obvious sense of Scripture against other men, may indeed 
be perfectly right, but he is liabl©^ to the charge, whether 
grave or frivolous as it may be, of preferring his own inter- 
pretation to that of the church. But maintaining the obvious 
sense, even if it be the wrong one, he can hardly be charged 
himself with arrogance ; he may with greater plausibility 
retort the charge on his opponents, that they are substituting 
the devices of their own ingenuity for the plain sense of the 
word of God. 

To say that the puritans v/ere wanting in humility because 
they did not acquiesce in the state of things which they found 
around them, is a mere extravagance arising out of a total 
misapprehension of the nature of humility, and of the merits 
of the feeling of veneration. All earnestness and depth of 
character is incompatible with such a notion of humility. A 
man deeply penetrated with some great truth, and compelled 
as it were to obey it, cannot listen to every one who may be 
indifferent to it or opposed to it. There is a voice to wliich 



240 LECTURE Y. 

lie already owes obedience, which he serves with the hum 
bkst devotion, which he worships with the most intense ven- 
eration. It is not that such feelings are dead in him, but 
that he has bestowed them on one object, and they are 
claimed for another. To which tliey are most due is a ques- 
tion of justice; he may be wrong in his decision, and his 
worship may be idolatrous ; but so also may be the worship 
which his opponents call upon him to render. If indeed it 
can be shown that a man admires and reverences nothing, he 
may justly be taxed with want of humility ; but this is at va- 
riance with the very notion of an earnest character ; for its 
earnestness consists in its devotion to some one object, as op- 
posed to a proud or contemptuous indifference. But if it be 
meant that reverence in itself is good, so that the more objects 
of veneration we have, the better is our character, this is to 
confound the essential difference between veneration and love. 
The excellence of love is its universality ; we are told that 
even the highest object of all cannot be loved, if inferior ob- 
jects are hated. And with some exaggeration in the expres- 
sion, we may admit the truth of Coleridge's lines, 

He prayeth well, who loveth well 
Both man, and bird, and beast; 

insomuch that if we were to hear of a man sacrificing even 
his life to save that of an animal, we could not help admiring 
him. But the excellence of veneration consists purely in its 
being fixed upon a worthy object; when felt indiscriminately 
it is idolatry or insanity. To tax any one, therefore, with 
want of reverence, because he pays no respect to what we 
venerate, is either irrelevant, or is a mere confusion. The 
fact, so far as it is true, is no reproach, but an honour ; be- 
cause to reverence all persons and all things is absolutely 
wrong : reverence shown to that which does not deserve it, 
is no virtue, no, nor even an amiable weakness, but a plain 



LECTURE V. ' 241 

folly and sin. But if it be meant that he is wanting in proper 
reverence, not respecting what is really to be respected, that is 
assuming the whole question at issue, because what we call 
divine he calls an idol ; and as, supposing that we are in the 
right, we are bound to fall down and worship, so, supposing 
him to be in the right, he is no less bound to pull it to the 
ground and destroy it. 

I have said thus much not only to do justice to the puritans, 
but because this charge of want of humility is one frequently 
brought by weaker and baser minds against the stronger and 
nobler ; not seldom by those who are at once arrogant and 
indifferent, against those who are in truth as humble as they 
are zealous. But returning to our immediate subject, we 
see that the puritans united in themselves two points which 
gave to their party a double appearance; and at a later pe- 
riod, when the union between the two was no longer believed 
in, they excited in the very same minds a mingled feeling ; 
admiration as far as regarded one point, alienation as regard- 
ed the other. The puritans wished to alter the existing 
church system for one which they believed to be freer and 
better ; and so far they resembled a common popular party ', 
but inasmuch as in this and all other matters their great prin- 
ciple was, conformity to the Scripture, and they pushed this 
to an extravagant excess, because tneir interpretation of 
Scripture was continually faulty, there was, together with 
their free political spirit, a narrow spirit in things religious, 
which shocked not only the popular party of the succeeding 
age, but many even in their own day, who politically enter- 
tained opinions far narrower than theirs. In Elizabeth's 
reign, however, they had scarcely begun to form a political 
party ; their views affected the church government only, and 
contemplated no alteration in the spirit of the monarchy , 
although it was evident, that if the crown continued to resist 
their efforts in church matters, they would end by resisting 
21 ' 



242 LECTURE V. 

not only its ecclesiastical supremacy, but its actual ascend 
ency in the constitution altogether. 

3d. The Roman Catholic party could not, as I have said, 
act openly in their own name, because their system had been 
put down by law ; and, as they were at present regarded as 
far worse in themselves and far more dangerous than the. 
puritans, all their movements and all expressions of their 
opinions were restrained with greater severity. Denying 
like the puritans the royal supremacy, and exposed for so do- 
ing to the heaviest penalties, their language sometimes as- 
sumed a strong political character, and they spoke freely of 
the duty of disobeying and deposing those tyrannical princes, 
on whom the church by the pope's voice had already pro- 
nounced its sentence of condemnation. It was the language 
of the old Guelf party, which some even to this hour regard 
as popular and liberal. But to oppose a lighter tyranny in 
the name of a heavier cannot be to serve the cause of good 
government ; and the moral and spiritual do.minion of the 
papacy was now become the great evil of the world, as it was 
pressing upon those parts of man's nature which were stirring 
for themselves, and whose silence would be no longer sleep 
but death. 

The language of the Roman Catholics did not mislead the 
mass of the English nation, but only made themselves more 
odious. The serpent's wisdom of Elizabeth cannot be denied 
by the bitterest of her enemies. With incomparable ability 
she made herself personally the darling of her people from' 
the first year of her reign to the last. Her behaviour when 
she passed through the city in state on the day preceding her 
coronation, or when thirty years afterwards she visited and 
harangued her troops at Tilbury, or when at the very end of 
her reign she granted so gracefully the petition of the house 
of commons against monopolies, was all of the same cliarac- 
tcr ; the frank and gracious and noble bearing of a sovereign 



LECTURE V 243 

feeling herself at once beloved and respected, knowing the 
greatness of her place, and sincerely, if not habitually, ap- 
preciating its duties. Her personal qualities made her dear 
to her subjects, and assisted them in seeing clearly that her 
cause and theirs were one. Conspiracy at home and open 
war abroad, the excommunications of Rome, the Armadas of 
Spain, the assassination plots of the Catholics, only bound her 
people's love to her more firmly. Her arbitrary acts, and 
still more arbitrary language, the severities, illegalities, and 
cruelties of her government towards the parties who opposed 
her, the people at large forgot or approved of. Nothing was 
unjust, nothing was cruel, against the enemies of one whom 
the nation so loved ; the almost universal voice of England 
called for the death of Mary Stuart, because the people be- 
lieved her life to be incompatible with the safety of their 
beloved queen. Whilst Elizabeth lived, political parties, 
properly so called, were incapable of existing ; it was the 
whole English nation on one side, and on the other a few 
conspirators. 

But another scene was preparing, and when her successoi 
came to the throne, the state of parties assumed a different as- 
pect; and political elements were added to the religious, 
rivalling or surpassing them in the interest which they awa- 
kened. This later stage of what I have called the religious 
movement of modern English history will be considered in- 
the following lecture. 



NOTEB 



TO 



LECTURE V, 



Note 1. — Page 220. 

'* * * jtill more precious is the story of his own time recorded 
by a stattsman, who has trod the field of political action, and has 
stood near the source of events and lookt into it, when he has in- 
deed a statesman's discernment, and knows how men act and why. 
Such are the great works of Clarendon, of Tacitus, of Polybius, 
above all of Thucydides. The latter has hitherto been, and is 
likely to continue unequalled. For the sphere of history since his 
time has been so manifoldly enlarged, it is scarcely possible now 
for any one mind to circumnavigate it. Besides, the more fastidious 
nicety of modern manners shrinks from that naked exposure of the 
character as well as of the limbs, which the ruder ancients took no 
offence at ; and machinery is scarcely doing less toward super- 
seding personal energy in politics and war, than in our manufac- 
tures ; so that history may come ere long to be written without 
mention of a name. In Thucydides too, and in him alone, there is 
that union of the poet with the philosopher, which is essential to 
form a perfect historian. He has the imaginative plastic power, 
which makes events pass in living array before us, combined with 
a profound reflective insight into their causes and laws ; and all his 
other faculties are under the dominion of the most penetrative prac 
deal understanding." 

J. C. Hare. " Guesses at Truth,'' p. 339 



NOTES TO LECTURE V. 245 



Note 2.— Pasre 223. 



" Liberal principles and popular principles are by no means neces- 
sarily the same ; and it is of importance to be aware of the difference 
between them. Popular principles are opposed simply to restraint 
— liberal principles to unjust restraint. Popular principles sym- 
pathize with all who are subject to authority, and regard with sus- 
picion all punishments ; liberal prindples sympathize, on the other 
hand, with authority, whenever the evil tendencies of human nature 
are more likely to be shown in disregarding it than in abusing it. 
Popular principles seem to have but one object — the deliverance of 
the many from the control of the few. Liberal principles, while 
generally favourable to this same object, yet pursue it as a means, not 
as an end ; and therefore, they support the subjection of the many 
to the. few under certain circumstances, where the great end, which 
they steadily keep in view, is more likely to be promoted by sub- 
jection than by independence. For the great end of liberal princi- 
ples is indeed ' the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' if we 
understand that the happiness of man consists more in his intellec- 
tual well-doing than in his physical ; and yet more in his moral and 
religious excellence than in his intellectual. 

" It must be allowed, however, that the fault of popular princi- 
ples as distinguished from liberal, has been greatly provoked by the 
long-continued prevalence of principles of authority which are no 
less illiberal. Power has been so constantly perverted that it has 
come to be generally suspected. Liberty has been so constantly 
unjustly restrained, that it has been thought impossible that it should 
ever be indulged too freely. Popular feeling is not quick in obser- 
ving the change of times and circumstances : it is with difficulty 
brought to act against a long-standing evil ; but, being once set in 
motion, it is apt to overshoot its mark, and to continue to cry out 
against an evil long after it has disappeared, and the opposite evil 
is become most to be dreaded. Something of this excessive recoil 
of feeling may be observed, I think, in the continued cry against the 
severity of the penal code, as distinguished from its other defects ; 
and the same disposition is shown in the popular clamour agains'l 



246 NOTES 

military hogging, and in the complaints which are often made against 
the existing system of discipline in our schools." 

Dr. Arnold's Letter ' On the Discipline of Public Schools,^ in the ' Quar 
terly Journal of Education.'' Vol. ix. p. 280. 1835. 

In the same letter occurs the following remark, which, though 
referring only to the author's ideal of school discipline for young 
boys, admits of a much more enlarged application to men in their 
social and political relations : 

" * * This would be a discipline truly generous and wise, in one 
word, truly Christian — making an increase of dignity the certain 
consequence of increased virtuous effort, but giving no countenance 
to that barbarian pride which claims the treatment of a freeman and 
an equal, while it cherishes all the carelessness, the folly, and the 
low and selfish principle of a slave," p. 285. 

Note 3. — Page 224. 

a * * 'pjjQ speech ascribed to Robespierre, when refusing tc 
spare Lavoisier, ' the republic does not want chemists,' is just of 
the same character with the speeches of Cleon at Athens, and but 
expresses the indifference of the vulgar, whether aristocrats or dem- 
ocrats, for an eminence with which they have no sympathy." * * 

Arnold's Thucydides. Note, B viii. 89. 

Note 4.— Page 226. 

There may be a doubt whether Hume's abhorrence of Puritan- 
ism is to be regarded as the sole or chief explanation of the politi- 
cal character of his history. But be that as it may, it is certain 
that his careless and epicurean temper was adverse not only to 
the earnestness and devotion of the Puritans, but to earnestness and 
devotion in any form. He was a cold-hearted unbeliever — self- 
satisfied in a shallow philosophy ; and as an historian, indolent in 
research and insidiously unfair in every thing directly or remotely 
connected with the Church of Christ. It is inveterate hostility tc 
leligion that has engendered in his history, and that too under a de- 
ceptive outward decorum, not a few of an historian's worst vices— 



TO LECTURE V. 247 

sophistry, misrepresentation, suppression of the truth, falsification, 
maij^nant hatred of Christian faith and holiness ; so that it has come 
to be said without exaggeration, " that there is less in the popular 
histoi 7 of the Christian kingdom of England which implies the 
reality of religion, — less acknowledgment of the laws and agents 
of a L)»vine government, partly concealed and partly manifested, to 
wljich the temporal rulers of the world are even here amenable, — 
than in the legends, or even the political history of Greece and 
Rome." 

Abundant proof of Hume's untrustworthiness may be found in an 
Article in the Quarterly Review for March, 1844, (No. 146,) in 
which many passages of his history are thoroughly discussed to ex- 
emplify his character as an historian, 

INoTE 5. — Page 227, 

*' Aristophanes had to deal with Democracy, not when she wass 
old, but when her heart was high and her pulse full, and when 
with some of the nobleness and generosity peculiar to youth, she 
had still more of its heat, impetuosity, and self-willedness. The 
old age of Athenian democracy (and a premature old age it neces- 
sarily was) must be looked for in the public speeches of Demosthe- 
nes, and in the warning voice of that eminent statesman, fraught 
with all that is great, holy, and commanding, yet powerless to put 
more than a momentary life into limbs paralyzed and effete with 
previous excesses. For her midday of life we must go to the in- 
tervening speeches of Lysias, a writer full of ability and talent, but 
a thorough son of democracy, and for which the calamities suffered 
by himself and his family under the oligarchal party form great ex- 
cuse. The very pages of this writer smell, as it were, of blood and 
confiscation ; nor does simple death always content him ; thrice, 
sometimes, would he 'slay his slain!' In running down his prey, 
this orator shows a business-like energy, unexampled in any other 
Grecian advocate : none hangs a culprit, or one whom he would 
fain make appear as such, so cleverly on the horns of a dilemma, 
and his notions of time, when in pursuit of democratic vengeance, 
ire truly royal : — *■ Nullum tempus Lysiae occurrit.' ' Numbers' 
%KQ his chief view of political society, and ' Your Manyship,' (re 



248 NOTES 

ifiirepov ttXTjOos) his idol. Generous ideas of rank and birth, of the 
graces and accomplishments of society, seem utterly unknown to 
him : energy and business evidently co: aprise his vocabulary of 
excellence, while his stock in trade is all the gloomy images 
that pervade a disturbed state of society ; strife, sedition, discord, 
continual fluctuation of government, addresses to the passions, not 
to the reason, the voice &f law stifled, or silent, that of party ajid 
faction perpetually predominant ; add exile, proscription, fine, hem- 
lock and blood spilt upon the ground almost like water, and we 
have the ingredients of a Lysiac speech, and the corresponding 
events of his period of history, pretty well in our hands." 

Mitchell's Note iAristophanes' ' Knights^' v. 1002.) 

Note 6. — Page 227. 

When Pericles is spoken of as the leader of a party, it is proper 
to bear in mind the position which history describes him as having 
held in Athens, and the influence or rather control he exercised 
there over the people during his most remarkable administration. 
For his independence is described by Thucydides to have been 
such that he was the header of the multitude but never led by them 
— that he could brave ;heir anger and resist the popular will — and 
that, in short, the government, though called a democracy,, was such 
only in name, for it was in one chief man : 

*** * atrtov (5' ^v oTt Ikuvo^ [liv Svvaras (5v rui re a^LdiixaTi Kat Tjj yvw/u/?, XP^' 
jiaTcav TE ^lacpavuis aSiaporaros yevdizevos, KareTx^ to n\^dos i^svdipois, itat ovk fjyera 
itaXAov utt' airov Jj avrbg rrye, 6ia to ^i) ktu)h£vos f| ov Trpo(Tr}K6vT(av rffp Svvaixiv 
npbg ri^ovi'iv ri \iyzLV, aW s^wv sir' a^noaei koL Trpdj d^y^v ti dvrenrelv. OTrdrs 
yovv aiaOoird ri ahro-vs napa Kaipbv S/?p£t On^aovvTag, Xfyw-v KariTrXijarasv eirl ra 
^o^daQai^ KoX h&hi&Tag aZ a\6yu)s avTiKaOiarri irdXiv tm to Bapaeiv, iyiyverd. 
Ts X(5y&> jj-fv Sr^/ioKpaTia, epyco 6( vtto tov Tzp^Tov dvSpbs dpx^- oi Se varepov tVot 
avTol ixaXXov Trp&j dW^Xovg ^vtes, kui dpsySftEvoi tov irp&roi eKaaTog yiyverjQat^ 
irpdirovTo Kad' ti5ovug tw Si^[i(^ Koi tu -KpdyjxaTa ivSiSovai." 

TL uci/dides^ ii. 65 

Note 7.— Page 228. 

* All the ancient writers, without exception, call the government 
of Dionysius a tyranny. This^ as is well known, was with there 



TO LECTURE V. 249 

no vague and disputable term, resting on party impressions of char- 
acter, and thus liable to be bestowed or denied according to the 
political opinions of the speaker or writer. It describes a particular 
kind of government, the merits of which might be differently esti- 
mated, but the fact of its existence admitted of no dispute. Dio- 
nysius was not a king, because hereditary monarchy was not the 
constitution of Syracuse ; he was not the head of the aristocratical 
party, enjoying supreme power, inasmuch as they were in possession 
of the government, and he was their most distinguished member ; 
on the contrary, the richer classes were opposed to him, and he 
found his safety in banishing them in a mass, and confiscating their 
property. Nor was he the leader of a democracy, like Pericles and 
Demosthenes, all-powerful inasmuch as the free love and admira- 
tion of the people made his will theirs ; for what democratical 
leader ever surrounded himself with foreign mercenaries, or fixed 
his residence in the citadel, or kept up in his style of living, and in 
the society which surrounded him, the state and luxury of a king's 
court "^ He was not an hereditary constitutional king, nor the 
leader of one of the great divisions of the commonwealth ; but he 
had gained sovereign power by fraud, and maintained it by force : 
he represented no party, he sought to uphold no ascendency but 
that of his own individual self; and standing thus apart from the 
sympathies of his countrymen, his objects were essentially selfish, 
his own safety, his own enjoyments, his own power, and his own 
glory. Feeling that he had no right to be where he was, he was 
full of suspicion and jealousy, and oppressed his subjects with taxes 
at once heavy and capriciously levied, not only that he might enrich 
himself, but that he might impoverish and weaken them. A gov- 
ernment carried on thus manifestly for the good of one single 
governor, with an end of such unmixed selfishness, and resting 
mainly upon the fear and not the love of its people ; with what ■ 
ever brilliant qualities it might happen to be gilded, and however 
free it might be from acts of atrocious cruelty, was yet called by 

the Greeks a tyranny." 

» * * * * * « 

" The Greeks had no abhorrence for kings : the descendant of a 
hero race, ruling over a people whom his fathers had ruled from 
time immemorial, was no subject of obloc|uy either with the people 



'^50 NOTES 

or with the philosophers. But a tyrant, a man of low or ordirary 
birth, who by force or fraud had seated himself on tlie necks of his 
countrymen, to gorge each prevailing passion of his nature at their 
cost, with no principle but the interest of his own power — such a 
man was regarded as a wild beast, that had broken into the fold of 
civilized society, and whom it was every one's right and duty, by 
Any means, or with any weapon, presently to destroy. Such mere 
monsters of selfishness Christian Europe has rarely seen. If the 
claim to reign ' by the grace of God' has given an undue sanction 
to absolute power, yet it has diffused at the same time a sense of 
the responsibilities of power, such as the tyrants, and even the 
kings of the later age of Greece, never knew. The most unprin- 
cipled of modern sovereigns would yet have acknowledged, that he 
owed a duty to his people, for the discharge of which he was 
answerable to God ; but the Greek tyrant regarded his subjects as 
the mere instruments of his own gratification ; fortune or his own 
superiority had given him extraordinary means of indulging his 
favourite passions, and it would be folly to forego the opportunity. 
It is this total want of regard for his fellow-creatures, the utter 
sacrifice of their present and future improvement, for the sake of 
objects purely personal, which constitutes the guilt of Dionysius 
and his fellow-tyrants. In such men all virtue was necessarily 
blighted : neither genius, nor courage, nor occasional signs of 
human feeling could atone for the deliberate wickedness of their 
system cf tyranny." *_* 

History of Rome, i. ch. 21. 

Note 8.— Page 228. 

This subject of the relation of the papal power to the monarchies 
of Europe during the middle ages has, I presume, been adverted to 
by Dr. Arnold in two of his pamphlets also, which I have not had 
however the opportunity of referring to, one on the " Roman Catho- 
lic Claims" in 1828, and the other on " the Principles of Churcli 
Reform" in 1833. His biographer speaks of them as "earlier 
works in which he vindicated the characters of the eminent popes 
of the middle ages, Gregory VII. and Innocent III., long before 
hat great change in the popular view respecting them, which in 



TO LECTURE V. 251 

this, as in many other instances, he had forestalled at a ( ne whet 
ais opinion was condemned as the height of paradox." 

(Chap. X. of "jL//e and Correspondence.'''') 

A discussion of this subject will be found in an article on " Miche- 
let's History of France," in No. 159, (January, 1844,) of the 
Edinburgh Review, an authority, certainly, as little likely as any 
to favour high views of church authority. The reviewer's purpose 
is to show, that " the popes were not so entirely in the wrong, as 
historians have deemed them, in their disputes with the emperors, 
and with the kings of England and France ;" and that the church 
*' was the great improver and civilizer of Europe." " It would," 
he observes, " do many English thinkers much good, to acquaint 
themselves with the grounds on which the best continental minds, 
without disguising one particle of the evil which existed openly or 
latently, in the Romish church, are on the whole convinced that it 
was not only a beneficent institution, but the only means capable of 
being now assigned, by which Europe could have been reclaimed 
from barbarism." 

" Who," it is asked, " in the middle ages were worthier of power 
than the clergy 1 Did they not need all, and more than all the in- 
fluence they could acquire, when they could not be kings or em- 
perors, and when kings and emperors were among those whose 
passion and arrogance they had to admonish and govern 1 The 
great Ambrose, refusing absolution to Theodosius until he per- 
formed penance for a massacre, was a type of what these men had 
to do. In a a age of violence and brigandage, who but the church 
could insist on justice, and forbearance, and reconciliation"? In an 
age when the weak were prostrate at the feet of the strong, who 
was there but the Church to plead to the strong for the weak 1 
They were the depositaries of the only moral power to which the 
great were amenable ; they alone had a right to remind kings and 
potentates of responsibility ; to speak to them of humility, charity, 
a.nd peace. Even in the times of the first ferocious invaders, the 
' Recits'' of M. Thierry (though the least favourable of the modern 
French historians to the Romish clergy) show, at what peril to 
themselves, the prelates of the church continually stepped between 
the oppressor and his victim. Almost all the great social improve- 



252 NOTES 

ments which took place were accomplished under their influence. 
They at all times took part with the kings against the feudal 
anarchy. The enfranchisement of the mass of the people from 
personal servitude, they not only favoured, hut inculcated as a 
Christian duty." 

" * * Now we say that the priesthood never could have stood 
their ground in such an age, against kings and their powerful vassals, 
as an independent moral authority, entitled to advise, to reprimand, 
and if need were, to denounce, if they had not been bound together 
mto an European body under a government of their own. They 
must otherwise have grovelled from the first in that slavish sub- 
servience into which they sank at last. No local, no merely na- 
tional organization, would have sufficed. The state has too strong 
a hold upon an exclusively national corporation. Nothing but an 
authority recognised by many nations, and not essentially dependent 
upon any one, could in that age have been adequate to the post. 
It required a pope to speak with authority to kings and emperors. 
Had an individual priest even had the courage to tell them that 
they had violated the law of God, his voice, not being the voice of 
the Church, would not have been heeded. That the pope, when 
he pretended to depose kings, or made war upon them with temporal 
g.rms, went beyond his province, needs hardly, in the present day, 
be insisted upon. But when he claimed the right of censuring and 
denouncing them with whatever degree of solemnity, in the name 
of the moral law which all recognised, he assumed a function ne- 
cessary at all times, and which, in those days, no one except 
the Church could assume, or was in any degree qualified to exer- 
cise." 

The view wnich Dr. Arnold appears to have taken of the gi'eat 
mediaeval struggle, whether the religious or the military principle — 
the spirit of the Christian church or the arbitrary temper of lawless 
feudalism, should predominate, is also strongly presented in a val- 
uable article, entitled, " St. Anselm and William Rufus," in the 
" British Critic," (No. 65, Jan., 1843,) on the controversy in Eng- 
land between that saintly and heroic primate, and the second of the 
Norman tyrants, of whom it was said, " Never a night came but 
he lay down a worse man than he rose ; and never a morning, but 
he rose worse than he lay down." 



TO LECTURE V. "^53 

" The great controversies of the early church, and those of the 
middle ages, dijfered in two points. Those of the first five centu- 
ries were for the most part carried on with persons out of the pale 
of the Church, and on points of faith and doctrine : those of the 
middle ages were mainly connected with life and morals, and wei ^ 
with men who knew no spiritual authority but hers. Her first op- 
ponents, quarrelling with her as a teacher of religion, broke off 
from her, and set up parallel and antagonist systems of theii own ; 
they were heretics and schismatics, self-condemned, and clearly 
marked out as such by their own formal and deliberate acts. There 
was no mistaking the grounds or the importance of the dispute. 
But in the eleventh century, these heresies w^ere things of a past 
age in the west — ^lifeless and inoperative carcasses of old enemies, 
from whom the Church had little comparatively to fear for the pres- 
ent. She had living antagonists to cope with, but they were of a 
different sort. They were no longer the sophist and declaimer of 
the schools, but mail-clad barons. Just as she had subdued the in- 
telligence and refinement of the old Roman empire, it was swept 
away, and she was left alone with its wild destroyers. Her com- 
mission was changed ; she had now to tame and rule the barba- 
rians. But upon them the voice which had rebuked the heretic 
fell powerless. While they pressed into her fold, they overwhelmed 
all her efforts to reclaim them, and filled her, from east to west, 
with violence and stunning disorder. When, therefore, she again 
roused herself to confront the world, her position and difficulties 
had shifted. Her enemy was no longer heresy, but vice, — wicked- 
ness which wrought with a high hand, — foul and rampant, like that 
of Sodom, or the men before the flood. It was not the Faith, but 
the first principles of duty — justice, mercy, and truth — which were 
directly endangered by the unbridled ambition and licentiousness of 
the feudal aristocracy, who were then masters of Europe. These 
proud and resolute men were no enemy out of doors ; they were 
within her pale, professed allegiance to her, and to be her protectors ; 
claimed and exercised important rights in her government and in- 
ternal arrangements, plausible in their origin, strengthened by pre- 
scription, daily placed further out of the reach of attack by ever- 
extending encroachments, and guarded with the jealousy of men 
who felt that the restraints of church discipline, if ever they 



S254 NOTES 

closed round them, would be fetters of iron. And with tt.is liercc 
nobility she had to fight the battle of the poor and weak ; to settle 
the question whether Christian religion and the offices of the 
Church were to be any thing more than names, and honours, and 
endowments, trappings of chivalry and gentle blood ; whether there 
were yet strength left upon earth to maintain and avenge the laws 
of God, whoever might break them. She had to stand between 
the oppressor and his prey ; to compel respect for what is pure and 
sacred, from the lawless and powerful." — Vol. 33, p. 7. 

Note 9. — Page 231. 

* * " Let me notice two or three things, in which the spirit ol 
Christianity has breathed, and will, we may hope, continue to 
breathe more fully, through our system of law and government. 
First, let us notice our criminal law. Now, in unchristian coun- 
tries, criminal law has mostly been either too lax or too bloody : 
too lax in a rude state of society, because the inconvenience of 
crimes was less felt, and their guilt was little regarded ; too bloody 
in a more refined state, strange as it may at first appear, because 
the inconvenie::^ce of crimes, and particularly of those against 
property, is felt excessively ; and the sacredness of human life, and 
the moral evil done to a people by making them familiar with 
bloody punishments, are not apt to be regarded by the mere spirit 
of worldly selfishness. Now, our laws for many years were, in 
these points, quite unch 'stian ; they were passed in utter disregard 
of our national pledges to follow Christ's law ; but latterly a better 
spirit has been awakened ; and men have felt that it is no light 
thing to take away the life of a brother ; that it is more Christian 
to amend an ofFeinder, if possible, than to destroy him. Only let 
us remember that there is an error on the other side, into which a 
mere feeling of compassion, if unmixed with a true Christian sense 
of the evil of sin, might possibly lead us. There is a danger lest 
men should think punishment more to be avoided than crime ; lest 
they should exclaim only against the severity of the one, without 
a due abhorrence of the guilt of the other. This, however, is not 
the spirit of Christianity, but of its utter opposite — lawlessness." 
Arnold's Sermons, vol. iv., " Christian Life, etc." 

Sermon XL. 



TO LECTURE V. 25C 

" It is a melancholy truth," says Blackstone, in his Commenta- 
ries, " that araorjg the variety of actions which men are daily liable 
to commit, no less than an hundred and sixty have been declared, 
by act of parliament, to be felonies without benefit of clergy ; or 
in other words, to be worthy of instant death." 

This was written about the year 1760, and in 1809, when Sir Sam- 
uel Romilly devoted himself to the arduous and admirable labour of 
bringing about a reformation of the criminal law of England, it is 
stated by Mr, Alison, in his History of Europe, (chap, 60,) that 
the punishment of death was by statute affixed to the fearful and 
almost incredible number of above six hundred different crimes, 
" while the increasing humanity of the age had induced so wide a 
departure from the strict letter of the law, that out of 1872 persons 
capitally convicted at the Old Bailey in seven years, from 1803 to 
1810, only one had been executed." The enormous list of capital 
crimes was the result of what Mr, Alison well calls the ' separate 
and selfish system' pursued by the various classes of property-hold- 
ers, whose influence was employed upon parliament in successive 
sessions, to obtain this inhuman safeguard for their respective in- 
terests. Well has Landor, in one of his ' Imaginary Conversations,' 
put these words into the mouth of Romilly : " I am ready to believe 
that Draco himself did not punish so many offences with blood as we 
do, although he punished with blood every one. * * * We punish 
with death certain offences which Draco did not- even note as 
crimes, and many others had not yet sprung up in society." 

It is only lately that the reform begun by Romilly, but which the 
sad catastrophe of his life prevented his witnessing, has been com- 
pleted so far as to limit capital punishment very much to crimes af- 
fecting directly or indirectly the security of life, instead of property. 
In 1837, Parliament (by the Acts of 7th Will. IV. and 1st Victoria) 
removed the punishment of death from about 200 offences, and it is 
now left applicable to treason, murder and attempts at murder, arson 
with danger to life, and to piracies, burglaries, and robberies, when 
aggravated by cruelty and violence. 

The danger, which Dr. Arnold alludes to as an extreme reaction 
from an old abuse, is often the growth of a spurious, sentimental 
sympathy with guilt, which lessens the authority and power of 
"Law, and causes low notions of the State by denying to it the 



256 NOTES 

right to exact the forfeiture of life for any crime. The reader who 
feels an interest in these questions of jurisprudence, and who can 
comprehend how reasoning and imaginative wisdom may be aptly 
combined, will study with advantage the philosophical series of 
' Sonnets on the Punishment of Death,' by Mr. Wordsworth, in the 
latest volume of his poems. An excellent commentary upon them 
is given in an article in the Quarterly Review, (No. 137, December. 
1841,) written, I believe, by the author of ' Philip Van Artavelde.' 

NoTs 10.— Page 231. 

" * * * Who, if possest of that practical wisdom which com- 
mands us to urge on the sluggish and to rein in the impetuous, will 
go on singing the same song year after year 1 even when the gen- 
eration he first endeavoured to arouse by it has passed away, and a 
new generation has sprung up in its place, altogether different from 
the first in its exigencies and its purposes, in the tone of its passions, 
the features of its understanding, and the energies of its will. Who 
is there who can always keep equally violent on the same side, ex- 
cept the slaves and minions of party, except those who are equally 
hostile to all governments, and those who are equally servile to all 1 
The very principles which yesterday were trodden under foot, and 
therefore needed to be lifted up and supported, perhaps to-day, when 
they have risen and become predominant, may in their turn require 
to be kept in check by antagonist principles. And this is the great 
problem for political wisdom, the rock it is the most difficult for politi- 
cal integrity not to split on : to know when to stop ; to withstand the 
precipitous seductions of success ; to draw back from the friends by 
whose side one has been fighting, at the moment they have gained 
and are beginning to abuse their victory ; to join those whom one 
has hitherto regarded with inevitable and perhaps well-deserved 
animosity ; to save those who have been too strong from becoming 
too weak ; and to rescue the abusers of power from being crushed 
by its abuse. This is no apology for a political turncoat : on the 
contrary, though there may be a semblance of similarity between 
the man who shifts his principles out of interest, and the man who 
modifies them out of principle, yet what the latter does is the very 
reverse of what the former does : the one turns his back on the 



TO LECTURE V. 257 

dnd and runs along before it; the other faces and confronts ir. 
.Such, for example, was the conduct of that most philosophical and 
consistent statesman Burke ; v/ho has been vilified, because he did 
not, like some of his friends, blindly cling to the carcase of the 
Liberty he once had loved, when her spirit had passed away from 
it. and a foul hend had seized on it in her stead * *." 

Julius Hare's ' Vindication of Niebuhr^s History.'' p. 20 

Note 11.— Page 236. 

* * " Those who teach that the powers of man woke at once 
from a deep slumber just at the beginning of the fifteenth century, 
or somewhere in the course of the fourteenth, do indeed use strange 
and preposterous language. For all the seven centuries during 
which the Western people had been growing up, these powers had 
been most wonderfully developing themselves. In the conflicts of 
political parties, in the conflicts of the schools, in splendid enter- 
prises and lonely watchings, the human faculties had been acquiring 
a strength and an energy which no sudden revolution, if it were the 
most favourable the imagination can dream of, ever could have im- 
parted to them. 

" But it is true also, that the consciousness of these powers, the 
feeling that they were within, and must come out, was characteristic 
of the new age. They had been exerted before in ascertaining the 
conditions and limitations to which they were subject, exerted with 
the pleasure which always accompanies the feeling of duty, but not 
from a mere joyous irrepressible impulse. Set free from the ban- 
dages of logic, yet still with that sense of subjection to law which 
was derived from the logical age, exercised under the sense of a 
spiritual Presence, without the cowardly dread of it ; these facul- 
ties began to assert themselves in the sixteenth century with a glad- 
ness and freedom of which there was no previous, and perhaps 
there has been no subsequent example. In those countries which 
had effectually asserted a national position, and where theological 
controversies were so far settled, that they did not occupy the whole 
mind of thinking men, or require swords to settle them, this outburst 
of life and energy took especially the form of poetry. English 
poetry had from the first been connected with the feelings of Ref- 



258 NOTES 

ormation and the rise of the new order ; Chauoer and WicklifF ex- 
pound each other. And now Protestantism manifestly gave the 
direction to the thoughts of those who exhibited least in their wri- 
tings of its exclusive influence. The high feeling of an ideal of 
excellence which had descended from the form.er age, and which in 
that age had not been able to express itself in words, now came in 
to incorporate itself with the sense of a meaning and pregnancy in 
all the daily acts and common relations of life, and the union gave 
birth to dramas as completely embodying the genius of modern 
Europe, as those of ^schylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes em- 
body the genius of Greece. Throughout Europe the influence was 
felt. The peculiar genius of Cervantes did not hinder him from 
expressing the feeling which we have designated as characteristic 
of the time, only as was natural from his circumstances with more 
of an apparent opposition to the older form of thought. And he as 
well as Ariosto and Tasso were able to bring forth in their works 
the national spirit of their respective countries, just as Shakspeare, 
with all his universality, exhibits so strikingly the life and character 
of England." 

Maurice's ' Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.'* 

Encyclopoedia Metropolitana. Pure Sciences, vol. ii. p. 650. 

In this extract Mr. Maurice views, as Dr. Arnold does in the 
Lecture, the Elizabethan literature in its relation to its own and a 
preceding age, while in the following passage in Mr. Keble's ad- 
mirable Lectures, he contemplates it in its relation to a succeeding 
generation : 

* * " Crediderim fore ut in singulis turn SEeculis turn regionibus 
germana Poesis, tacito quodam testimonio, veram ac solidam Pieta- 
tem foveat. Nee facile invenias in ulla civitate, quae quidem leges 
moresque habeat stabiles, mutari in gravius et sanctius rem sacram 
et religiosam, non ante mutato laudatorum carminum tenore. Ni- 
mirum, si ulla unquam ex parte fuerit labefactata religio, ea certe 
tenus erunt homines eadem conditione qua patres nostri nondum ad 
Deum conversi. Nihil ergo vetat eos eadem ratione ac via. novo 
videlicet Poetarum ordine, sensim ad meliora erigi, 

" Exempli gratia, (ut in domesticis maneara,) recordamini paulis- 
per «eleberrimam scriptorum familiam, qui apud nos viguerunt, Elisa- 



TO LECTURE V. 259 

betlise tempore. Noniie ea fuit vatum et carminum indoles, quae 
ipsis, qui scribebant, ignaris, optime conveniret cum saniore de re- 
bus divinis sententia, qualis erat in honore futura, regnante Carolo 1 
Quid 1 Shaksperus ille noster, deliciae omnium, maxime An^lorum 
adolescentiura, nihilne putandus est egisse, qui toties ridicule, toties 
acriter invectus est in ilia preesertim vitia, quae proxima aetate illa- 
tura erant reipublicae nostras tam grave detrimentum 1 qui semper 
frui videtur aura quadam propria, et sibi quidem gratissima quoties 
vapulant sive pietatem simulantes, sive regiam minuentes majesta- 
tem 1 Quid ] Spenserum qui juvenes assidue in manibus cum 
amore et studio habuerant, quo tandem animo prselium erant inituri 
cum illo hoste, cui solenne fuerit omni convicio lacessere nunc re- 
gies fosminas, nunc sacrorum antistites ]" 

Kebi£, ^ Frcpleciione.s,'' p. 81* 



LECTURE VI. 



Oi/ii sketch of the English part of what I have called the 
religious movement of modern Europe has now arrived at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century. And I have said that 
ihe several parties as hitherto developed have been religious 
rather than political, but that they were soon to become 
political also. I have used these words " religious" and 
" political" in their common acceptation for the sake of con- 
venience ; but it is quite necessary to observe the confusions 
which attend this use of them, as well as of the kindred 
words "church" and "state," "spiritual" and "secular," 
confusions of no slight importance, and perpetually tending, 
as I think, to perplex our notions of the whole matter to 
which the words relate. 

I have called the puritans in the sixteenth century a reli- 
gious party rather than a political, because it was the gov- 
ernment of the church and not of the state, to use again the 
common language, which they were attempting to alter; the 
government by bishops, archdeacons, &c., under the royal 
supremacy, not the government by king, lords, and commons. 
But if we examine the case a little more closely, we shall 
find that in strictness they were a political party, and that the 
changes which they wanted to introduce were political ; 
political, it may be said, even more than religious, if we 
apprehend the distinction involved in these words more ac- 
curately than seems to be done by the common usage of 
them. 

I shall not, 1 trust, be suspected of wishing merely to bring 



262 LECTURE VI. 

forward a startling paradox, when I say that in speaking of 
Christianity the word " church" is rather to be used as distinct 
from religion than as synonymous with it, and that it belongs 
in great part to another set of ideas, relating to things which 
we call political. Religion expresses the relations of man to 
God, setting aside our relations to other men : the church ex- 
presses our relations to God in and through our relations to oth- 
er men; the state, in popular language, expresses our relations 
to other men without reference to our relations to God : but I 
have always thought that this notion is in fact atheistic, and that 
the truer notion would be that the state at least expresses our 
relations to other men according to God's ordinance, that is, in 
some degree including our relation to God. However, without 
insisting on this, we will allow that the term religion may 
have a meaning without at all considering our relations to 
other men, and that the word state may have a meaning 
without at all considering our relations to God ; not its per- 
fect meaning, but a meaning ; whereas the word " church" 
necessarily comprehends both : we cannot attach any sense 
to it without conceiving of it as related to God, and involving 
also the relations of men to one another. It stands, therefore, 
according to this view of it, as the union of the two ideas of 
religion and the state, comprising necessarily in itself the es- 
sential points of both the others; and as being such, all church 
questions may be said to be both religious and political ; 
although in some the religious element may be predominant, 
and in others the political, almost to the absorption of the 
other. 

Now questions of church government may appear clearly 
to be predominantly political ; that is, as regarding the rela- 
tions of the members of the church to one another, whether 
one shall govern the rest, or the few the many, or the many 
themselves : and the arguments which bear upon all these 
points in societies merely political might seem the arguments 



LECTURE VI. 263 

which should decide them here. But two other considerations 
are here to be added ; one, that in the opinion of many per- 
sons of opposite parties, all such arguments are barred by 
God's having expressly commanded a particular form of 
government ; so that instead of the general question, what is 
the best form of government under such and such circum- 
stances, we have another, what is the particular form com- 
manded by God as the best under all circumstances. This 
is one consideration, and according to this, it might no doubt 
happen that persons of the most opposite political opinions 
might concur in desiring the very same form of church gov- 
ernment, simply as that which God had commanded. This 
is possible, and in individual cases I do not doubt that it has 
often actually happened. But as the question, what is the 
particular form divinely commanded,^ is open to manifold 
doubts, to say nothing of the farther question, " whether any 
particular form has been commanded or no ;" so practically 
p.mongst actual parties, men's opinions and feelings, political 
ana others, have really influenced .them in deciding the ques- 
tion of fact, and they have actually maintained one form or 
another to be the form divinely commanded, according to 
their firm belief of its superior excellence, or their sense of 
the actual evils of other forms, or their instinctive feeling m 
favour of what was established and ancient. And so we 
really should thus far reclaim questions on church goverur 
ment to the dominion of political questions ; political or moral 
considerations having really for the most part been the springs 
of the ojTinions of the several parties respecting them. 

But I said that there were two considerations to be added, 
and I have as yet only mentioned one. The other is the be- 
lief entertained of the existence of a priesthood in Christianity, 
and this priesthood regulated by a divine law, and attached 
for ever to the offices which exercise government also. And 
this priesthood being, according to the opinion of those who 



264 LECTURE Vl 

believe in it, of infinite religious importance, the question of 
church government becomes in their view much more reli- 
gious than political ; religious, not only in this sense, that 
church government, whether we may think it good or bad, 
must be tried simply by the matter of fact, whether it is the 
government ordained by God ; but in another and stricter 
sense, that the priesthood implying also the government, and 
being necessary to every man's spiritual welfare, not through 
the governing powers attached to it, but in its own direct 
priestly acts which are quite distinct from government, church 
government is directly a matter of religious import, and to 
depart from what God has ordained respecting it is not merely 
a breach of God's commandments, but is an actual cutting 
off of that supply of spiritual strength by which alone we can 
be saved. So that in this view questions of church govern- 
ment, as involving more or less the priesthood also, must be 
predominantly religious. 

Am I, then, contradicting myself, and were the parties of 
the sixteenth century purely religious, as I have called them 
religious in the popular sense of the word, and not at all, or 
scarcely at all political ? I think that the commonest reader 
of English history will feel that they were political, and that 
I was right in calling them so ; where, then, are we to find 
the solution of the puzzle ? In two points, which I think are 
historically certain : first, that the controversy about episco- 
pacy was not held of necessity to involve the question of the 
priesthood, because the priestly character was not thought to 
be vested exclusively in bishops, nor to be communicable 
only by them ; so that episcopacy might be after all a 
point of government and not of priesthood : and secondly, in 
this, that the reformed churches, and the church of England 
no less than the rest, laid no stress on the notion of a priest- 
hood, and made it no part of their faith ; so that questions of 
church government, when debated between protestants and 



LECTURE VI. 265 

protestants, were debated without reference to it, and as 
questions of government only. Whereas amongst Roman 
Catholics, where the belief in a priesthood is at the bottom of 
the whole system, questions of church government have had 
no place, but the dispute has been de sacerdotio et imperio, 
respecting the limits of the church and the state ; for the 
church being supposed identical with, or rather to be merged 
in the priesthood, its own government of itself was fixed irrev- 
ocably ; and the important question was, how large a portion 
of human life could be saved from the grasp of this dominion, 
which was supposed to be divine, and yet by sad experience 
was felt also to be capable both of corruption and tyranny. 
So that there was no remedy but to separate the dominion of 
the state from that of the church as widely as possible, and 
to establish a distinction between secular things and spiritual, 
that so the corrupt church might have only one portion of the 
man, and some other power, not subject to its control, might 
have the rest. 

Returning, then, to my original point, it is still, I think, 
true that the parties of the sixteenth century in England 
were in great measure political ; inasmuch as they disputed 
about points of church government, without any reference to 
a supposed priesthood ; and because even those who main- 
tained that one or another form was ta be preferred, because 
it was of divine appointment, were influenced in their inter- 
pretation of the doubtful language of the Scriptures by their 
own strong persuasion of what that language could not but 
mean to say. But being political even as we have hitherto 
regarded them, the parties become so in a much higher de- 
gree when we remember that, according to the theory of the 
English constitution in the sixteenth century, its church and 
its state were one. 

Whether this identification be right or wrong, is no part of 
my present business to decide ; but the fact is perfectly in. 

23 



266 LECTURE VI. 

disputable. It does not depend merely on the language of 
the act which conferred the supremacy on Henry the Eighth, 
large and decisive as that language is. (1) Nor on the large 
powers and high precedence, ranking above all the bishops 
and archbishops, assigned to the king's vicegerent in matters 
ecclesiastical, such vicegerent being a layman. (2) Nor 
yet does it rest solely on the fact of Edward the Sixth issuing 
an office for the celebration of the communion purely by his 
own authority, with the advice of his uncle the protector 
Somerset, and others of his privy council, without the slight- 
est mention of any consent or advice of any bishop or cler- 
ical person whatsoever ; the king declaring in his preface; 
that he knows what by God^s word is meet to be redressed, 
and that he purposes with God's grace to do it.*(3) But it is 
proved by this, that every point in the doctrine, discipline, 
and ritual of our church, was settled by the authority of par- 
liament : the Act of Uniformity of the first of Elizabeth, 
which fixed the liturgy and ordered its use in all churches, 
being passed by the queen, lords temporal, and commons 
only; the bishops being Roman Catholics, and of course re- 
fusing to join in it ; so that the very preamble of the act 
omits all mention of lords spiritual, and declares that it was 
enacted by the queen, with the advice and consent of the 
lords and commons, and by the authority of the same. (4) 
And it is proved again by the language of the prayer for the 
church militant, where the king's council and his ministers 
are undoubtedly regarded as being officers in the church by 
virtue of their offices in the state. (5) This being the fact, 
recognised on all hands, church government was no light 
matter, but one which essentially involved in it the govern- 

* See Edward the Sixth's "Order of the Communion," "imprinted at Lon- 
don by Richard Grafton, 1547," and reprinted by Bishop Sparrow in his " Col- 
lection of Articles, Injunctions, Canons, Orders," &c., and again lately by 
Dr. Cardwell, as an Appendix to the Two Liturgies of Edward the fsixth. Ox 
ford, 1841. 



' LECTURE VI. 267 

ment of the state ; and the disputing the queen's supremacy 
was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important 
Dortions of her sovereignty, and committing half of the gov- 
ernment of the nation to other hands. And therefore, when 
James the First used his famous expression of " no bishop, 
no king," (6) he spoke exactly in the spirit of the notion that 
an aristocracy is a necessary condition of a monarchy, unless 
it be a pure despotism, military or otherwise ; that where 
the people are free, if they have rejected an aristocracy, 
they will surely sooner or later reject a monarchy also. 

But still, had Elizabeth's successor been like herself, the 
religious parties might have gone on for a long time without 
giving to their opposition a direct political form. Sir Fran- 
cis Knollys, writing to Lord Burghley in January, 1592, 
(1591, O.S.,) wonders that the queen should imagine "that 
she is in as much danger of such as are called puritans as 
she is of the papists, and yet her majesty cannot be ignorant 
that the puritans are not able to change the government of 
the clergy, but only by petition at her majesty's hands. And 
yet her majesty cannot do it, but she must call a parliament 
for it ; and no act can pass thereof unless her majesty shall 
give her royal assent thereto."* (7) This shows that as yet 
no notion was entertained of parliament's taking up the cause 
of itself, and pressing it against the crown ; and indeed such 
was the mingled fear and love entertained for Elizabeth, that 
the mere notion of a strong party in parliament setting itself 
in opposition to her was altogether chimerical. But in the 
mean time the puritan party was gaining ground in the 
country ; its supporters in parliament were continually be- 
coming more numerous ; and instead of the most able, the 
most respected, and the most beloved of queens, the sovereign 
of England was now James the First. 

* Queen Elizabeth and Her Times. Edited by T. Wright, Trinity College, 
Cambridge. London, 1838. Vol. ii. p. 417. 



268 LECTURE VI. 

At one stroke the crown became placod in a new position. 
iSTot less averse to the puritans than Elizabeth had been, King 
James met with ncaie of that enthusiastic loyalty from the 
mass of the people which in the late reign had softened the 
opposition of the puritans, and if it had not softened it would 
have rendered it harmless. He abandoned Elizabeth's fo- 
reign policy, as he was incapable of maintaining either the 
dignity or the popularity of her personal character. The 
spell which had stayed the spirit of political party was bro- 
ken, and the waters whose swelling had been \e\d back as it 
were by its potent influence, now took their natural course, 
and rose with astonishing rapidity. (8) 

The most disastrous revolutions are produced by the ex- 
treme of physical want ; the most happy, by wants of a moral 
kind, physical want being absent. There are many reasons 
why this should be so : and this amongst others, that extreme 
physical want is unnatural : it is a disease which cannot be 
shaken off without a violent and convulsive struggle. But 
moral and intellectual cravings are but a healthful symptom 
of vigorous life : before they were felt, no wrong was done 
in withholding their appointed food, and if it be given them 
when they demand it, all goes on naturally and happily. 
Nay, even where it is refused, and a struggle is the conse- 
quence, still the struggle is marked with much less of bitter- 
ness, for men contending for political rights are not infuriated 
like those who are fighting for bread. Now at the beginning 
of the seventeenth century the craving for a more active 
share in the management of their own concerns was felt by 
tt large portion of the English people. It had been suspended 
in Elizabeth's reign owing to the general respect for her 
government, and the growing activity of the nation found its 
employment in war, or in trade, or in writing ; for the mass 
of writers in Elizabeth's time was enormous. (9) But when 
the government excited no respect, then the nation began to 



LECTURE VI. 269 

question with itself, why in the conduct of its affairs such a 
government should be so much and itself so little. 

No imaginary constitution floated before the eyes of the 
popular party in parliament, as the object towards which all 
their efforts should be directed. Their feeling was indistinct, 
but yet they seem to have acted on a consciousness that the 
time was come when in the government of the country the 
influence of the crown should be less, and that of the nation 
more. It appears to me that the particular matters of dispute 
were altogether subordinate ; the puritan members of parlia- 
ment pressed for the reform of the church ; men who were 
keenly alive to the value of personal freedom, attacked arbi- 
trary courts of justice, and the power of arbitrary imprison- 
ment ; those who cared for little else, were at least anxious 
to keep in their own hands the control over their own money. 
But in all the impulse was the same, to make the house of 
commons a reality. Created in the midst of regal and aris- 
tocratical oppression, and wonderfully preserved during the 
despotism of the Tudor princes with all its powers unimpaired 
because it had not attempted to exercise them unseasonably; 
an undoubted branch of the legislature, — the sole controller 
by law of the public taxation, — authorized even in its feeblest 
infancy to petition for the redress of national grievances and 
to impeach public delinquents in the name of the " Commons 
of England," — recognised as speaking with the voice of the 
nation when the nation could do no more than petition and 
complain, the house of commons spoke that same voice no less 
now, when the nation was grown up to manhood, and had the 
power to demand and to punish. (10) 

The greater or less importance of a representative assem- 
bly is like the quicksilver in a barometer; it rises or falls 
according to causes external to itself; and is but an index 
exhibited in a palpable form, of the more or less powerful 
pressure of the popular atmosphere. When the people at 



270 LECTURE VI. 

large are poor, depreissed, and inactivej then their represen 
tatives faithfully express their weakness ; nothing is so help- 
less as a house of commons, or a chamber of deputies, when 
their constituents are indifferent to or unable to support their 
efforts. But under opposite circumstances an opposite result 
is inevitable ; where the people are vigorous, powerful, and 
determined, their representatives, so long as they are believed 
to represent them faithfully, cannot but wield a predominant 
influence. Naturally then and unavoidably did the power 
of the house of commons grow in the seventeenth century, 
because, as I have said, they spoke the voice of the nation, 
and the nation was now become strong. 

Under these circumstances there were now working to- 
gether in the same party many principles which, as we have 
seen, are sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance the 
popular principle, that the" influence of many should not be 
overborne by that of one, was working side by side with the 
principle of movement, or the desire of carrying on the work 
of the Reformation to the farthest possible point, and not only 
the desire of completing the Reformation, but that of shaking 
off the manifold evils of the existing state of things both po- 
litical and moral. Yet it is remarkable that the spirit of 
intellectual movement stood as it were hesitating which party 
it ought to join : and as the contest went on, it seemed rather 
to incline to that party which was most opposed to the politi- 
cal movement. This is a point in the state of English party 
in the seventeenth century which is well worth noticing, and 
,we must endeavour to comprehend it. 

We might think, a priori, that the spirit of political, and 
that of intellectual, and that of religious movement, would go 
en together, each favouring and encouraging the other. But 
the spirit of intellectual movement differs from the other two 
in this, that it is comparatively one with which the mass of 
niankmd have little sympathy. Political benefits all men 



LECTURE VI. 271 

can appreciate ; and all good men, and a great many more 
than we might well dare to call good, can appreciate also 
the value not of all, but of some religious truth which to 
them may seem all : the way to obtain God's favour and to 
worship Him aright, is a thing which great bodies of men 
can value, and be moved to the most determined effons, if 
they fancy that they are hindered from attaining to it. But 
intellectual movement in itself is a thing which few care for. 
Political truth may be dear to them, so far as it affects their 
common well-being ; and religious truth so far as they may 
think it their duty to learn it ; but truth abstractedly, and 
because it is truth, which is the object, I suppose, of the pure 
intellect, is to the mass of mankind a thing indifferent. Thu3 
the workings of the intellect come even to be regarded with 
suspicion as unsettling : We have got, we say, what we 
want, and we are well contented with it ; why should we be 
kept in perpetual restlessness, because you are searching 
after some new truths, which when found will compel us to 
derange the state of our minds in order to make room for 
them. Thus the democracy of Athens was afraid of and 
hated Socrates (11) ; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew 
that Cleon's partisans no less than his own aristocratical 
friends would sympathize with his satire, when directed 
against the philosophers. But if this hold in political mat- 
ters, much more does it hold religiously. The two great 
parties of the Christian world have eaeh their own standard 
of truth hy which they try all things : Scripture on the one 
hand, the voice of the church on the other. To both there- 
fore the pure intellectual movement is not only unwelcome, 
but they dislike it. It will question what they will not allow 
to be questioned ; it may arrive at conclusions which they 
would regard as impious. And therefore in an age of re- 
ligious movement particularly, the spirit of intellectual move- 
ment soon finds itself proscribed rather than countenanced. 



272 LEcruRE VI. 

But still there remains the question why it should have 
shrunk from the religious party which was aiming at reform 
rather than from that which was opposed to it. And the ex- 
planation appears to be this. The Reforming party held up 
Scripture in all things as their standard, and Scripture ac- 
cording to its most obvious interpretation. Thus in matters 
of practice, such as church government, ceremonial, &c., 
they allowed of no liberty; Scripture was to be the rule 
positively and negatively ; what was found in it was com- 
manded ; what it did not command was unlawful. Again, 
in matters of faith, what the Scripture taught was to be be- 
lieved : believed actively, not submissively accepted. I in- 
stance the most startling points of Calvinism as an example 
of this. And this party knew no distinction of learned or un- 
learned, of priest or layman, of those who were to know the 
mysteries of the kingdom of God, and of those who were to 
receive the book sealed up, and believe that its contents were 
holy, because their teachers told them so. All having the 
full Christian privileges, all had alike the full Christian re- 
sponsibilities. I have known a man of science, a Roman 
Catholic, ex:press the most intolerant opinions as to dissenters 
from the Romish communion, and yet when pressed on the 
subject, declare that his business was science, and that he 
knew nothing about theology. But the religious reforming 
party of the seventeenth century would allow their men of 
science no such shelter as this. They were members of 
Christ's church, and must know and believe Christ's truth 
for themselves, and not by proxy. "With such a party, then, 
considering that the truth for which they demanded such im- 
plicit faith, was their own interpretation of Scripture, formed 
on no very enlarged principles, the intellectual inquirer, who 
demanded a large liberty of thought, and to believe only 
what he could reasonably accept as true, could entertain ne 
sympathy. 



LECTURE VI. 273 

But with the party opposed to them it was different. To 
a man not in earnest the principle of church authority is a 
very endurable shackle. He does homage to it once for all, 
and is then free. In matters of church government, however, 
men in earnest no less than men not in earnest found that, 

jntellectually speaking, the antipopular party dealt more 
gently with them than the puritans. For Hooker's principle 
being adopted, that the church had great liberty in its choice 
of a government, as well as of its ceremonial, the existing 
church government and ritual rested its claim not on its being 
essential always, and divinely commanded, but on being 
established by lawful authority. On this principle any man 
might obey it, without being at all obliged to maintain its in- 
herent excellence : his conformity did not touch his intellec- 
tual freedom. With respect to doctrines, even to the honest 
and earnest believer there was in many points also allowed 
a greater liberty. Where the church did not pronounce 

, authoritatively, the interpretation of Scripture was left free : 
and the obvious sense was not imposed upon men's belief as 
the true one. Thus the peculiar points of Calvinism were 
rejected by the antipopular party, the more readily no doubt 
because Calvin had taught them, but also by many because 
of their own startling character. But where there was an 
indifference to religious truth altogether, there the principle 
of church authority, and the strong distinctions drawn between 
the knowledge required of the clergy, and that necessary foi 
the laity, offered a most convenient refuge. It cost such a 
man little not to attack opinions about which he cared noth- 
ing ; it cost him little to say that he submitted dutifully to 
the authority of the church, being himself very ignorant of 
such matters, and unable to argue about them. His igno- 
rance was really unbelief: but his profession of submission 
allowed him to inquire freely on other matters which he 
did care for, and there to assert principles which, if consis- 



274 LECTURE VI. 

tently applied, might shake what the church most maintained. 
But he would not make the application, and like the Jesuit 
editors of Newton, he was ready if questioned to disclaim 
it. (12) 

Thus up to the breaking oat of the civil war in 1642, we 
find some of the most inquiring and purely intellectual men 
of the age, such as Hales and Chillingworth, strongly at- 
tached to the antipopular party. And it was his «^xtreme 
shrinking: from what he considered the narrow-mindedness 
of the puritans, which principally, I think, influenced the 
mind of Lord Falkland in joining at last the antipopular 
cause as the least evil of the two. But as the civil war 
went on, the popular party underwent a great change ; a 
change which prepared the" way for the totally new form in 
which it appeared in Europe in that second period of modern 
history which I have called the period of the political move- 
ment. 

Before, however, we trace this change, let us considej: 
generally the progress of the struggle in the first forty years 
of the seventeenth century. What strikes us predominantly 
is, that v/hat in Elizabeth's time was a controversy between 
divines, was now a great political contest between the crown 
and the parliament. I have already observed that the grow- 
ing vigour of the nation necessarily gave a corresponding 
vigour to the parliament : its greater ascendency was in the 
course of things natural. And although the nation was grow- 
ing throughout the forty years and more of Elizabeth's reigU; 
yet of course the period of its after growth produced much 
greater results : the infant grows into the boy in his first ten 
years of life ; but it is in the second ten years, from ten to 
twenty, that he grows up into the freedom of manhood. But 
yet it cannot be denied that had Elizabeth reigned from 16'03 
to 1642, the complexion of events would have been greatly 
different. A great sovereign might have either headed the 



LECTURE VI. 2?5 

* 

movement or diverted it. For instance, a sovereign who ob- 
serving the strength of the national feeling in favour of the 
protestant Reformation had entered frankly and vigorously 
into the great continental struggle ; had supported on princi- 
ple that cause which Richelieu aided purely from worldly 
policy ; had struck to the heart of Spain by a sustained naval 
war, and by letting loose Raleigh and other such companions 
or followers of Drake and Frobisher upon her American col- 
onies ; while he had combated the Austrian power front to 
front in Germany, and formed an army like Cromwell's in 
foreign rather than in domestic warfare, such a king would 
have met with no opposition on the score of subsidies ; his 
faithful commons would have supported him as liberally and 
heartily as their fathers had supported Henry the Fifth's 
quarrel with France, or as their posterity supported the tri- 
umphant administration of the first William Pitt. And puri- 
tan plans of church reform would have been cast aside 
unheeded : the star-chamber would have remained unas- 
sailed, because it would have found no victims, or none whom 
the public mind would have cared for ; and Hampden instead 
of resisting the tax of ship-money, would, like the Roman 
senators of old, have rather built and manned a ship at his 
own single cost ; and commanding it in person for the cause 
of God and the glory of England, might have died like Nel- 
son after completing the destruction of the Spanish navy, 
instead of perishing almost in his own native county, at that 
sad skirmish of Chalgrave field. 

This might have been, had James the First been the very 
reverse of what he was ; and then the contest would have 
been delayed to a later period, and have taken place under 
other circumstances. For sooner or later it could not but 
eome, and the first long peace under a weak monarch would 
nave led to it. For the supposed long course of foreign wars 
would have caused parliaments to have been continually 



278 LECTURE VI, 

summoned, so tnat it would not have been possible after\^ aida 
to have discontinued them ; and whenever the parliament 
and a weak king had found themselves in presence of each 
other, with no foreign war to engage them, the collision waa 
inevitable. We have rather therefore reason to be thankful 
that the struggle did take place actually, when no long war 
had brought distress upon the whole nation, and embittered 
men's minds with what Thucydides* calls its rude and vio- 
lent teaching (13) ; but in a time of peace and general pros- 
perity, when our social state was so healthy that the extreme 
of political commotion did not seriously affect it; so that al- 
though a three or four years' civil war cannot but be a great 
calamity, yet never was there any similar struggle marked 
with so little misery, and stained with so few crimes, as the 
great English civil war of the seventeenth century. 

Meantime, as I said, the character of the popular party 
underwent a change. For as the struggle became fiercer, 
and more predominantly political, and bold and active men 
were called forward from all ranks of society, it was impos- 
sible that the puritan form of church government, or their 
system of Scripture interpretation, should be agreeable to all 
the popular party. Some broke off therefore in one direc- 
tion, others in another. In times when the masses were no 
longer inert, but individual character was everywhere mani- 
festing itself, no system of centralization, whether in the 
hands of bishops or presbyters, was likely to be acceptable. 
Centralization and active life pervading the whole body are 
hard to reconcile : he who should do this perfectly, would 
have established a perfect government. For " quot homines 
tot sententise" holds good only where there is any thinking at 
all : otherwise there may be a hundred millions of men and 
only " una sententia," if the minds of the 99,999,999 are 

« III. 82. 



LECTURE VI. 277 

wholly quiescent. And thus the Independent principle arose 
naturally out of the high excitement on religious questions 
which prevailed throughout the nation ; just as the multitude 
of little commonwealths in Greece, and in Italy in the middle 
ages, showed the stirring of political life in those countries. 
Each congregation was independent of other congregations ; 
each individual in the congregation, according to his gifts real 
or fancied, might pray, exhort, and interpret Scripture. Men 
so resolute in asserting the rights of the small society against 
the larger, and of the individual against the society, could not 
but recognise, I do not say the duty, so much as the necessity 
of toleration ; and thus the independents showed more mutual 
indulgence in this matter than any religious party had as yet 
shown in England. But such a system, to say nothing of its 
other defects, had in it no principle of duration ; for it seems a 
law that life cannot long go on in a multitude of minute parts 
without union, nay even without something of that very cen- 
tralization which yet if not well watched is so apt to destroy 
them by absorbing their life into its own : there wants a heart 
in the political as in the natural body, to supply the extremi- 
ties continually with fresh blood. 

But I said that the popular party broke off from puritan- 
ism partly in one direction and partly in another. Some 
there were who set the religious part of the contest aside al- 
together ; esteeming the disputes about church government 
of no account, holding all the religious parties alike in equal 
contempt, as equally narrow-minded in their different ways. 
The good government of the commonwealth was their main 
object, with a pure system of divine philosophy. The eyes 
of such men were turned rather to Greece and Rome than 
to any nearer model ; there alone, as they fancied, was to be 
found the freedom which they desired. Others, who were 
incapable of any romantic or philosophical aspirations, desired 
simply such objects as have been expressed, in later times, 



)|78 LECTURE VI. 

under the terms civil and religious liberty ; they deprecated 
unjust restraint, whether external or internal ; but with this 
negation their zeal seemed to rest contented. A great and 
fatal error, and which has done more than any thing else to 
make good men in later times stand aloof from the popular 
cause. For liberty, though an essential condition of all our 
excellence, is yet valuable because it is such a condition : I 
may say of it what I have said of actual existence, that the 
question may always be asked why we are free, and if the 
answer is, that we may do nothing, or that we may please 
ourselves, then liberty, so far as we are concerned, is value- 
less : its good is this only, that it takes away from another 
the guilt of injustice. But to speak of religious liberty, when 
we mean the liberty to be irreligious, or of freedom of con- 
science, when our only conscience is our convenience, is no 
other than a mockery and a profanation. It is by following 
such principles that a popular party justly incurs that re- 
proach of axoXatfia, which the ancient philosophers bestowed 
especially on democracies. (14) 

I have tried to analyze the popular party : I must now en- 
deavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of 
course an antipopular party varies exceedingly at different 
times ; when it is in the ascendant its vilest elements are 
sure to be uppermost : fair and moderate men, — just men, 
wise men, noble-minded men, — then refuse to take part with 
it. But when it is humbled, and the opposite side begins to 
imitate its practices, then again many of the best and noblest 
spirits return to it, and share its defeat though they abhorred 
its victory. We must distinguish, therefore, very widely be- 
tween the antipopular party in 1640, before the Long Parlia- 
ment met, and the same party a few years, or even a few 
months afterwards. Now taking the best specimens of this 
party in its best state, we can scarcely admire them too 
highly. A man who leaves the popular cause when it is tri- 



LECTURE VI. 279 

unipliant, arid joins the party opposed to it, without really 
changing his principles and becoming a renegade, is one of 
the noblest characters in history. He may not have the 
'clearest judgment or the firmest wisdom ; he may have been 
mistaken ; but as far as he is concerned personally, we can- 
not but admire him. But such a man changes his party not 
to conquer, but to die. He does not allow the caresses of his 
new friends to make him forget that he is a sojourner with 
them, and not a citizen : his old friends may have used him 
ill ; they may be dealing unjustly and cruelly ; still their 
faults, though they may have driven him into exile, cannot 
banish from his mind the consciousness that with them is his 
true home ; that their cause is habitually just, and habitually 
the weaker, although now bewildered and led astray by an 
unwonted gleam of success. He protests so strongly against 
their evil that he chooses to die by their hands rather than in 
their company ; but die he must, for there is no place left on 
earth where his sympathies can breathe freely ; he is obliged 
to leave the country of his affections, and life elsewhere is 
intolerable. This man is no renegade, no apostate, but the 
purest of martyrs ; for what testimony to truth can be so 
pure as that which is given uncheered by any sympathy ; 
given not against enemies amidst applauding friends, but 
against friends amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing enemies. 
And such a martyr was Falkland ! (15) 

Others who fall off from a popular party in its triumph, 
are of a different character ; ambitious men, who think that 
they are become necessary to their opponents, and who crave 
the glory of being able to undo their own work as easily as 
they had done it : passionate men, who, quarrelling with their 
old associates on some personal question, join the adversary 
in search of revenge : vain men, who think their place une- 
qual to their merits, and hope to gain a higher on the oppo- 
site side : timid men, who are frightened as it were at the 



280 LECTURE VI. 

noise of their own guns, and the stir of actual battle ; who 
had liked to dally with popular principles in the parade ser- 
vice of debating or writing in quiet times, but who shrink 
alarmed when both sides are become thoroughly in earnest : 
and again, quiet and honest men, who never having fully 
comprehended the general principles at issue, and judging 
only by what they see before them, are shocked at the vio- 
lence of their party, and think that the opposite party is now 
become innocent and just, because it is now suffering wrong 
rather than doing it. Lastly, men who rightly understand 
that good government is the result of popular and antipopulai 
principles blended together, rather than of the mere ascend- 
ancy of either ; whose aim, therefore, is to prevent eithei 
from going too far, and to throw their weight into the lightei 
scale : wise men and most useful, up to the moment when 
the two parties are engaged in actual civil war, and the 
question is, which shall conquer. For no man can pretend 
to limit the success of a party, when the sword is the arbi- 
trator ; he who wins in that game does not win by halves : 
and therefore the only question then is, which party is on the 
whole the best, or rather, perhaps, the least evil ; for as one 
must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party so 
crushed should be the worse. 

Again, of the supporters of an antipopular party in its or- 
dinary state, before it has received accessions from its oppo- 
site, there is also a considerable variety. Walton,* when 
describing the three parties of the reign of Elizabeth, speaks 
of them as " the active Romanists," " the restless non-con- 
formists," and " the passive and peaceable Protestants." 
This virtue of quietness, meekness, and peaceableness, the 
d'^'^ay/xoo'i^v'^ of the Athenians, has been ascribed to Wal- 
ton himself, and is often claimed as the characteristic ex- 
cellence of an antipopular party, and particularly of the 

* liife. of Hooker. 



LECTURE VI. 281 

antipopular party of our English contests of the seventeenth 
century. Now it may be, though I do not think that it is 
made out clearly, that there existed at Athens a state of 
things so feverish — that a town life, surrounded by such 
manifold excitements as was that of the Athenians, had so 
overpowered the taste for quiet, that the aif^ayi^^v , or the 
man who followed only his own domestic concerns, was a 
healthy rarity. (16) But in general, and most certainly with 
our country life, and our English constitutions, partaking 
something of the coldness of our northern climate, it is extra- 
ordinary that any should have regarded this aif^ayiiocfuvT] 
as a rare virtue, and praised the meekness of those who, be- 
ing themselves well off, and having all their own desires con- 
tented, do not trouble themselves about the evils which they 
do not feel ; and complain of the noisy restlessness of the 
beggars in the street, while they are sitting at their ease in 
their warm and comfortable rooms. Isaac Walton might en- 
joy his angling undisturbed in spite of star-chamber, ship- 
money, high-commission court, or popish ceremonies ; what 
was the sacrifice to him of letting the public grievances take 
their own way, and enjoying the freshness of a May morning 
in the meadows on the banks of the Lea ? Show me a pop- 
ulation painfully struggling for existence, toiling hard and 
scarcely able to obtain necessary food, and seeing others 
around them in the enjoyment of every luxury, and this pop- 
ulation repelling all agitation, and going on peaceably and 
patiently under a system in which they and they alone are 
suffering ; and I will yield to no man in my admiration, in 
my deep reverence for such quietness, or rather for such 
true meekness, such self-denying resignation. For fhere is 
not a living man on whom hunger and cold do not press 
heavily, if he has to bear them ; and he who endures these 
is truly patient. But are all men keenly alive to religious 
error ? to political abuses which do not touch them ? to in- 



282 LECTURE VI. 

justice from which others only are the sufferers? Oi are 
our English minds so enthusiastic, that our most dangerous 
tendency is to forget our own private and personal concerns, 
lo crave after abstract changes in church and state, and to 
rail against existing institutions with the certainty of meeting 
as our reward poverty and a jail ? Generally, then, there 
is no merit in the acquiescence in existing things shown by 
the mass of the population whose physical comforts are not 
touched, nor their personal feelings insulted. There may be 
individuals, no doubt, whose submission is virtuous ; men 
who see clearly what is evil, and desire to have it redressed, 
but from a mistaken sense of duty, and from that only, for- 
bear to complain of it. But where the evil is one which the 
mass care little for, when to complain of it is highly danger- 
ous, and there is enough of work and enjoyment in their own 
private concerns to satisfy all the wants of their nature, I 
know not how the political peaceableness of such persons can 
be thought in itself to be either admirable or amiable. It 
seems to me to be in itself neither admirable nor strongly 
blameable ; but simply the following of a natural tendency ; 
and of this sort was the dislike of the popular party enter- 
tained by the great majority of their opponents. 

Others, however, there were who were opposed to the pop- 
ular party, at least so long as it was predominantly religious, 
on more positive and earnest grounds. A vast multitude of 
principles and practices had been joined together in the 
Roman Catholic system, not all necessarily connected with 
each other. Of these, some desired to restore all, some loved 
peculiarly those which were most essential to the system real, 
ly, though not in the eyes of the vulgar ; others regretted 
only those which, having no necessary connection with it,, 
were yet proscribed for its sake. To all of these, and to 
many more besides, which the church of England had act- 
ually adopted, the puritans professed the most uncompromis 



LECTURE VI 283 

ing hostility. Not only, therefore, were all those opposed to 
them who thought that the Reformation had gone too far, but 
many of those also who thought that it had gone far enough, 
and could not bear to go any farther. Men of taste, men 
who loved antiquity, men of strong associations which they 
felt almost sacred, were scandalized at the homeliness, the 
utter renunciation of the past, the rude snapping asunder of 
some of the most venerable usages, which were prominent 
parts of the puritan system. But along with these were oth- 
ers whose dislike to puritanism went deeper ; some who 
dreaded their system of Scripture interpretation, and the doc- 
trines which they deduced from it ; a large party who be- 
lieved the government by bishops to be divinely commanded, 
as firmly as the puritans believed the same of their presby- 
teries ; but many also, and from the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century onwards continually becoming more active, 
and raised to higher dignities, who in their hearts hated the 
Reformation altogether— hated especially the foreign protest- 
ants — hated the doctrine of justification by faith, loved cere- 
monies and rites, idolized antiquity, preached up the priest- 
hood, and, in the words of Lord Falkland, " laboured to 
bring in an English though not a Roman popery." " I 
mean," he goes on,* " not only the outside and dress of it, 

* The Lord Falkland's speech, Feb.- 9th, 1641, O. S.—(.Froin Nalson's 
Collections :) 

* * * " The truth is, Mr. Speaker, that -as some ill ministers in our state 
first t«ok away our money from us, and afterwards endeavoured to make our 
money not worth the taking, by turning it into brass by a kind of antiphiloso- 
pher''s stone ; so these men used us in the point of preaching : first, depressing 
it to their power, and next labouring to make it such, as the harm had not 
been much if it had been depressed, the most frequent subjects even in the 
most sacred auditories, being the jus divinum of bishops and tithes, the sacred- 
ness of tlie clergy, the sacrilege of impropriations, the demolishing of puritan- 
ism and propriety, the building of the prerogative at Paul's, the introduction 
of such doctrines as, admitting them true, the trath would not recompense the 
scandal ; or of such as were so far false, that, as Sir Thomas More says of the 
casuists, their business was not to keep men from sinning, but to mform thenij 



284 LECTURE VI. 

but equally absolute ; a blind dependence of the people upon 
the clergy, and of the clergy upon themselves." All these 
several elements were found mixed up together in the anti- 
popular party of the first half of the seventeenth century. 

Let us now pass abruptly from 1642 to 1660 ; when the 
long contest was ended, the old constitution restored, and the 
first period, which I have called the period of the religious 
movement, was brought to a close. Let us consider what 
me object of the movement had been, and what v/as its suc- 
cess. And first, as religious parties only, we have seen that 
there had been three, those who wished to maintain the sys- 
tem established at the Reformation, those who wished to alter 
it by carrying on the Reformation farther, and those who 
wished to undo it, and return to the system which it had 
superseded. We have seen that this last party could not act 
openly in its own name, and its own direct operations were 
therefore inconsiderable : but a portion of the established - 
church party, in their extreme antipathy towards those who • 
called for farther reform, did really labour in spirit to undo 
what had been effected already, serving the principles of the 
Roman Catholic party if not its forms. But the result of the 
contest was singularly favourable to the middle party, to the 

Quam prope ad peccatum sine peccato liceat accedere ; so it seerried their 
work was to try how much of a papist miglit be brought in without popery, 
and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospel, without bringing them- 
Belves into danger of being destroyed by the law. * * Mr. Speaker, to go 
yet farther, some of them have so industriously laboured to deduce thennelves 
from Rome, that they have given great suspicion that in gratitude they desire 
to return thither, or at least to meet it half way ; some have evidently laboured 
to bring in an English, though not a Roman popery : I mean not only the out- 
side and dress of it, but equally absolute ; a olind dependence of the people 
upon the clergy, and of the clergy upon themselves ; and have opposed the 
papacy beyond the seas that they might settle one beyond the water, [i. e 
trans Thamesin, at Lambeth.] Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily 
false, if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of R ome to 
the preferments of England; and be so absolutely, dnectly, and cordia.ly pa- 
pists, that it is all that £1500 z year can do to keep them from confessing it." 



LECTURE VI. 285 

supporters of the Elizabethan reformation against the Roman 
Catholics on one side, and against the puritans on the other. 
It was decided that the church of England was to remain at 
once protestant and episcopal, acknowledging the royal su- 
premacy and retaining its hierarchy ; repelling alike Roman- 
ism and puritanism; maintaining the reform already effected, 
resisting any reform or change beyond it. This is the first 
and obvious impression which we derive from the sight of the 
battle-field when the smoke is cleared away ; all other stan- 
dards are beaten down, the standard of the protestant and 
episcopal church of England appears to float alone trium- 
phant. 

But on examining more closely the state of the conquerors, 
we find that their victory has not been cheaply won ; that 
they do not leave the field such as they came upon it. And 
this is the important part of the whole matter, that the original 
idea of the church of England, as only another name for the 
state and nation of England, was now greatly obscured, and 
from this time forward was ever more and more lost sight of. 
Change in the government of the church had been success- 
fully resisted ; there the puritans had done nothing ; but 
changes of the greatest importance had been wrought in the 
state, not in its forms indeed, for the alteration of these had 
been triumphantly repealed by the restoration, but in its 
spirit : the question whether England was to be a pure or 
mixed monarchy had been decisively settled ; the ascendency 
of parliament, which the revolution of 1688 placed beyond 
dispute, was rendered sure by the events of the preceding 
contest ; the bloodless triumph of King William was pur- 
chased in fact by the blood shed in the great civil war. It 
was impossible then that that absoluteness of church govern- 
ment which had existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and her 
successors should be any longer tolerated ; no high-commission 
court could be appointed now, nor would the license of the 



286 LECTURE VI. 

crown be held sufficient to give the clergy a legislative power, 
and to enable them to make canons for the church at their 
discretion. The canons of 1640, passed by Laud in the 
plenitude of his power, were annulled by the parliament after 
the Restoration no less than they had been by the Long Par- 
liament ; the writ De hseretico comburendo was now for the 
first time abolished by law. The old forms of church gov- 
ernment had been maintained against all change, but being 
ill suited to the advance which had been made in the spirit 
of the general government, they were not allowed to possess 
their former activity. 

Whilst the identity of church and state was thus impaired 
on the one hand, it was also lessened in another way by the 
total defeat of the puritans, and by the ejection of such a 
multitude of their ministers by the new oaths imposed by the 
Act of Uniformity. Hitherto the puritans had been more or 
less a party within the church; the dispute had been whether 
the church itself should be modelled after the puritan rule or 
no ; both parties as yet supposing that there was to be one 
church only as there was one nation. But first the growth 
of independency during the civil war, and now the vehement 
repulsion by the church of all puritan elements from its min- 
istry, made it but too certain that one church would no 
longer be coextensive with the nation. The old idea was 
at'.empted to be maintained for a while by force; we had the 
Five-Mile Act and the Conventicle Act, (17) and such men 
as John Bunyan and William Penn were subjected to legal 
penalties ; but to maintain an idea which was now contra- 
dicted by facts, became as impossible as it was •mj ust ; and 
the Toleration Act, recognising the legal existence of various 
bodies of dissenters from the church, was at least a confession 
that the great idea of the English Reformation could not be 
realized in the actual state of things ; its accomplishment 
must be reserved for happier and better times. 



LECTUSE VI. 287 

The church, or religious movement, having thus ended 
satisfactorily to the principles of neither party, the religious 
elements on both sides retired as it were into the background, 
and the political elements were left in the front rank of the 
battle alone. We cannot wonder, th^efore, that the next 
great period of movement should have been predominantly 
political. The composition and vicissitudes of parties during 
this second period will form the subject of the next lecture. 



N O T E S 



TO 



LECTURE VI 



Note 1.— Page 26G. 



The course of argument and historical reference in this paragraph 
must be taken in connection with Dr. Arnold's idea of a Christian 
state — what may be called his high-State theory. If on the con- 
trary the reader should connect it with the more common opinion 
respecting the functions of the State — 'the low Jacobinical notion/ 
as Arnold was in the habit of stigmatizing the Warburtonian and 
Utilitarian theory, that the only object of the State is the conservation 
of body and goods, he will receive an impression from this passage 
widely different from the thoughts that were in the mind of the 
Lecturer, and which he would have been the last to sanction. In 
establishing the identification of Church and State, according to the 
theory of the English constitution in the sixteenth century, Dr. Ar- 
nold adopts a course of historical argument which gives great prom- 
inence to the influence of parliamentary legislation and civil author- 
ity upon ecclesiastical affairs, — indeed this is so strongly stated that 
his real object might be mistaken for an intention to establish the 
supremacy of the State over the Church, — considered as distinct 
and even opposite, and thus to fasten an Erastian character upon 
the English Church. It is however enough to show that such was 
not the drift of his reasoning, to observe that it would be rather in- 
direct and indeed insidious argumentation, different from the pur- 
pose he has expressed, and altogether at variance with the upright 
and candid habit of his mind. Dr. Arnold was not a man to strike 
a secret or even a side blow. 

The supremacy of the Crown was, in truth, a favourite idea with 



NOTES TO LECTURE VI. 28D 

him, not, however, according to the common acceptation of the 
phrase, but because considering Church and State to be identical, 
and ' the Christian nation of England to be the Church of Eng- 
land,' he therefore considered the ' head of that nation the head of 
the Church.' In one of his letters (No. 246) ne speaks of ' the 
doctrine of the Crown's Supremacy having been vouchsafed to the 
English Church by a rare blessing of God, and containing in itself 
the true idea of the Christian perfect Church, — ^the Kingdom of 
God.' In another letter (No. 216) he writes more at length: 

" * * I look to the full development of the Christian Church in 
its perfect form, as the Kingdom of God, for the most effective re- 
moval of all evil, and promotion of all good ; and I can understand 
no perfect Church, or perfect State, without their blending into one 
in this ultimate form. I believe, farther, that our fathers at the 
Reformation stumbled accidentally, or rather were unconsciously 
led by God's Providence, to the declaration of the great principle 
of this system, the doctrine of the King's Supremacy ; which is, in 
fact, no other than an assertion of the supremacy of the Church or 
Christian society over the clergy, and a denial of that which I hold 
to be one of the most mischievous falsehoods ever broached, — that 
the government of the Christian Church is vested by divine right in 
the clergy, and that the close corporation of bishops and presbyters, 
whether one or more makes no difference, — is and ever ought to be 
the representative of the Christian Church. Holding this doctrine 
IS the very corner-stone of all my political belief, I am equally op- 
posed to Popery, High Churchism, and the claims of the Scotch 
Presbyteries on the one hand ; and to all the Independents, and ad- 
vocates of the separation, as they call it, of Church and State on the 
other; the first setting up a Priesthood in the place of the Church, 
and the other lowering necessarily the objects of Law and Govern- 
ment, and reducing them to a mere system of police, while they 
profess to wish to make the Church purer." 

In letter 187 he writes, " * * I want to know what principles and 
ebjects a Christian State can have, if it be really Christian, mc^re m 
less than those of the Church. In whatever degree it differs from 
the Church, it becomes, I think, in that exact proportion unchris- 
tian. In short, it seems to me that the State must be 'the world,' 

if it be not 'the Church;* but for a society of Christians to bf 

25 



290 NOTES 

* the world' seems monstrous. * * Again, the spyoi of a Christian 
State and Church is absolutely one and the same : nor can a differ- 
ence be made out which shall not impair the Christian character of 
one or both ; as, e.g., if the epyov of the State be made to be merely 
physical or economical good, or that of the Church be made to be 
the performing of a ritual service." — And in letter No. 79 he states 
his theory " that the State, being the only power sovereign over 
human life, has for its legitimate object the happiness of its people, 
— their highest happiness, not physical only, but intellectual and 
moral ; in short, the highest happiness of which it has a concep- 
tion." 

Now it is this conception which Dr. Arnold had of what he called 
'•' the highest duty and prerogative of the Commonwealth," that 
must be taken in connection with the paragraph in the Lecture. 
The same legislation, in English history, is also referred to in one 
of his letters, (No. 84,) where he expresses the opinion that " the 
statutes passed about the Church in Henry the Eighth's and Edward 
the Sixth's reigns are still the op%at of its constitution, if that may be 
said to have a constitution which never was constituted, but was 
left as avowedly unfinished as Cologne Cathedral, where they left 
a crane standing on one of the half-built towers, tliree hundred 
years ago, and have renewed the crane from time to time, as it 
wore out, as a sign not only that the building was incomplete, but 
that the friends of the Church hoped to finish the work whenever 
they could. Had it been in England, the crane would have been 
speedily destroyed, and the friends of the Church would have said 
that the Church was finished perfectly already, and that none but 
its enemies would dare to suggest that it wanted any thing to com- 
plete its symmetry and usefulness." 

Entertaining the theory of the State which Dr. Arnold did, he 
naturally expressed himself in strong and unqualified language re- 
specting the regal supremacy — language the unmodified force of 
which might mislead others, setting out from different principles of 
the functions of government, into the opinion that this supremacy 
prostrated the Church beneath a royal papacy. An additional expla- 
nation, therefore, may not be inappropriate in this and the following 
notes on the same paragraph. 

" In considering the title of supreme head of the Church o^ Eng- 



ro LECTURE VI. 291 

land, given to Henry 7IJ.I. by the clergy of England, we must bo 
careful to distinguish the sense in which they allowed it to the king, 
from any exaggerated and unsound meaning which may have been 
affixed to it by courtiers or lawyers : for the former only is the 
Church of England responsible ; the latter she is not concerned 
with. 

"When it was proposed to the clergy of the Convocation of 
Canterbury, to acknowledge the King supreme head of the church 
and clergy of England, they refused to pass this title simply and 
unconditionally ; and after much discussion, the King was at last 
obliged to accept it with a proviso^ introduced by the clergy, to the 
following eifect : ' Ecclesiee et cleri Anglican! singularem protec- 
torem et unicum et supremum dominum, et {quantum per Christi 
legem licet) etiam supremum caput, ipsius majestatem recognosci- 
mus.'" 

Paumer's ' Treatise on the Church,'' vol. i. part ii. ch. 3. 

" The clergy of England, in acknowledging the supremacy of 
the King, a. d. 1534, did so, as Burnet proves, with the important 
proviso, ' quantum per Christi legem licet ;' which original condi- 
tion is ever to le supposed in our acknowledgment of the royal su- 
premacy. Consequently we give no authority to the prince, except 
what is consistent with the maintenance of all those rights, liberties, 
jurisdictions, an 1 spiritual powers which ' the law of Christ' con- 
fers on his Chu-ch." 

Ih. Part I. ch. 10. 

Note 2.— Page 266. 

" The first act of the King was to appoint Cromwell, in 1535, his 
Vicar-General and Visitor of Monasteries, The former title was 
certainly novel, and sounded ill, but there being no evidence that it 
was intended in a heterodox sense, the church was not bound to 
resist the title or office. * * 

" The claim advanced by Cromwell as the "King's vicegerent to 
me first seat in convocation was indisputable. As the represen-" 
tative of the prince, he could not be refused a position which the 
oecumenical synods allotted to the Christian emperors." 

Palmer's ' Treatise^ <^c.,' vol. i. part ii ch. 3. 



292 NOTES 

Note 3.— Page 266. 

" It is alleged, that in the time of Edward VI. all the most im- 
portant changes in the form of ordinations, the public service, tho 
Dody of the canons, &c., were regulated by the King or parliament, 
to the annihilation of the church's power. This is far from the truth. 
The parliament only added the force of the temporal law to the 
determinations of convocations or bishops, or at least its regulations 
were confirmed by ecclesiastical authority. Thus, in 1547, an act 
passed for communion in both kinds, and against private masses, 
on the ground of Scripture and primitive practice, but the convoca- 
tion also agreed to it." 

Palmer's ' Treatise, <^c.,' vol. i, part ii. eh. 3. 

Note 4.— Page 266. 

" It is admitted that the parliament passed acts for abolishing the 
papal jurisdiction and establishing the regal supremacy, with an 
oath to that effect ; and also for establishing the English ritual. 
But these acts were merely confirmatory of the laws and institu- 
tions made by the church of England during the reigns of Henry 
VIII. and Edward VI., which had been indeed disobeyed by the 
schismatics in the reign of Mary, and annulled by the civil power, 
but which had never been annulled by any legitimate authority of 
the church. These acts were simply revivals of laws which had 
been formerly made with the concurrence of the church of England . 
they only gave the temporal sanction to institutions which had d^ 
ways remained in their full spiritual force and obligation." 

Palmer's ' Treatise,' vol. i. part ii, ch. 5. 

Note 5.— Page 266. 

In this pj:oof of the identification of Church and State, it is not 
clear whether Dr. Arnold intended to limit the argument to the 
King's council. There seems to be no reason for such a limit, for 
the argument admits of just the same application to " all that are 
put in authority under him," (the king,) and also to " all Christian 
Kings, Princes, and Governors," or in the language of the praye} in 
Lhe American liturgy, " all Christian rulers." 



TO LECTURE Vi. ' 293 



Note 6. — Page 267. 

King James's use of the expression is thus set forth in the witty 
jhurch-historian, Fuller's dramatically told account of the Hampton 
court conference : 

" His Majesty. — ^Why, then, I will tell you a tale : After that 
the religion restored by King Edward VI. was soon overthrown by 
Queen Mary here in England, we in Scotland felt the effect of it. 
For, thereupon, Mr. Knox writes to the queen regent, a virtuous 
and moderate lady ; telling her that she was the supreme head of 
the church, and charged her, as she would answer it to God's tri- 
bunal, to take care of Christ's Evangel, in suppressing the popish 
prelates, who withstood the same. But how long, trow you, did 
this continue 1 Even till, by her authority, the popish bishops were 
repressed, and Knox, with his adherents, being brought in, made 
strong enough. Then began they to make small account of her 
supremacy, when, according to that mo7^e light wherewith the]" 
were illum.inated, they made a farther reformation of them.selves. 
How they used the poor lady my mother, is not unknown, and how 
they dealt with me in my minority. I thus apply it : my lords the 
bishops, (this he said, putting his hand to his hat,) I may thank you 
that these men plead thus for my supremacy. They think they 
cannot make their party good against you, but by appealing unto it. 
But if once you were out and they in, I know what would become 

of my supremacy ; for, ' No bishop, no king !' " 

Book X. sect. 1. 

Note 7.— Pago 267. 

In considering the authority of this quotation from KnoUys's let- 
ter to Cecil, it is to be judged not merely as correspondence from one 
of Queen Elizabeth's privy-counsellors to another, but it must be re- 
membered that the writer was one of those public men who sympa- 
thized strongly wdth the favourable feeling for the Puritan party, 
which was entertained both in the parliaments and the Queen's cabi- 
net, during at least more than the first half of that reign. Mr. 
Ilallam speaks of Knollys as one of " the powerful friends at court" 
Df the Puritans, and calls him "the staunch enemy of episcopacy," 



294 NOTES 

though in this there is probably something of that exaggeration i.ito 
which this historian is occasionally led by some intemperance of 
feeling. {Const. Hist.,\o\. i. ch. 4.) Collier, in his 'Ecclesiastical 
History,^ (part ii. book 6,) speaks of " Leicester, Knowlis, and W"al- 
singham," as " either puritans, or abettors of that party." With 
more moderation than either, Mr. Keble, in his preface to ' Hooker's 
Eccles. Polity,' (p. 57,) speaks of " such persons as Knolles and 
Milmay, ana others, who were Calvinists and Low Churchmen on 
principle." The editor of the book Dr. Arncild has quoted from, 
calls Knollys " a zealous puritan." 

Indeed the very letter from Sir Francis Knollys that Dr. Arnold 
has quoted, shows the feeling with which he appears through the 
reign to have been in the habit of regarding respectively the influ- 
ence of the opposite parties of 'purytanes' and 'papysts.' It is a 
letter interceding to obtain fair dealing and equal justice for Cart- 
wright, and the other early non-conformists : after the sentence 
quoted, it goes on — " And as touching their seditious going aboute 
the same, if the byshoppes, or my Lord Chancelor, or any for them, 
could have proved de facto that Cartewrighte and his fellow pris- 
oners had gone aboute any such matter seditiously, then Carte- 
wrighte and his followers had been hanged before this tyme. But 
her Majestie must keepe a forme of justyce, as well against Pury- 
tanes as any other subjectes, so that they may be tryed in tyme 
convenient, whether they be suspected for sedition or treason, or 
whatever name you shall give unto it, being purytanisme or other- 
wyse." 

KnoHys appears to have been unable to apprehend any danger to 
the Church of England from the Puritan party in his day — then 
only a party within the communion of the English Church, and the 
danger that, to his eye, was always darkening the horizon, was the 
papal power. There was indeed a combination of many causes 
ivhich made it then appear the most imminent and present peril. 
The date of the letter quoted was, it will be observed, a short time 
only after England had been threatened by the Spanish Armada — 
and it was not many years before that, that all protestan^ Europe 
had been horror-struck with the atrocities of the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew's — Burleigh himself having been invited to the bloody 
marriage festivities. Going back a little earlier, the recollectioi; 



TO LECTURE VI. 295 

was fresh of the Marian persecutions — the fires at Smithfield had 
not been very long extinguished — and another cause of the feeling 
alluded to is to be found in the state of feverish apprehension pro- 
siuced by the papal bull of Pius V., dethroning Queen Elizabeth, 
and by the intrigues for the succession of Mary Queen of Scots — 
appeased only by the perpetration of that great national crime, the 
tragic judgment executed at Fotheringay Castle. The Puritan 
movement was therefore countenanced, not only by the encourage- 
ment, from worthless motives, of that weak and wicked favourite the 
Earl of Leicester, but also conscientiously by such as Knollys, who 
were impelled by the dread of the papacy. With these feelings it 
appears that Knollys was active in interposing to thwart the eccle- 
siastical measures to enforce conformity. That Roman Catholic 
dominion was the one danger which filled his vision, is shown yet 
more conclusively by another letter of his in this same collection of 
the correspondence of the Elizabethan statesmen. It is in January, 
1576, (1577, O. S.,) that he writes as follows : "If her Majestie 
wol be safe, she must comforte the hartes of those that be her most 
faythfull subjects, even for conscyence sake. But if the Bishopp 
of Canterburye shall be deprived, then up startes the pryde and 
practise of the papistes, and downe declyneth the comforte and 
strengths of her Majestie's safety." (Vol. ii. p. 75.) The primate 
referred to is Grindal, who, it will be remembered, incurred the 
queen's displeasure, suspension from his ecclesiastical functions, 
and other penalties, in consequence of refusing to exercise them 
for the suppression of the new puritan practice of " exercises of 
fropkesying,^'' which he desired rather to regulate than to suppress. 
Whatever may be thought by persons of different ecclesiastical 
principles, of Archbishop Grindal's indulgence to the non-conform- 
ists, and (as Collier expresses it) " too kind an opinion of the Cal- 
vinistic scheme — warping a little to an over-indulgence" — whatever 
estimate may be formed of the fitness of a primacy so gentle as 
Grindal's for the times, coming as it did between the firmness of 
Parker's primacy and the vigour of Whitgift's, he will be remem- 
bered as one who was not intimidated by the malignity of the mean 
ind unprincipled Leicester, as one tt) whom, in the exercise of his 
powers in the church, the voice of conscience and of his God spake 
I'.'juder than the voice of his queen, and who for his piety and vir- 



296 NOTES 

fcues is commemorated as the " good Grindal," of the historian 
Fuller, and as *' the good shepherd, Algrind," by the poet Spenser, 
with oft-repeated affection in his allegorical pastorals. 



Note 8.— Page 2'6S'. 

Sir Egerton Brydges, in his ' Memoirs of the Peers o(" England 
during the reign of James the First,' passionately describes the 
fallen condition of the nobility at this period of English history : 

"What was the character of the nobility during this inglorious 
and disgraceful reign, that, by alternate acts of tyranny and pusil- 
lanimous concession, sowed those seeds of civil war which a few 
years afterwards overturned the monarchy, and brought the King 
to the scaffold 1 We see the ancient, illustrious, and galUnt fami- 
ly of Vere, Sir Francis and Sir Horace, with their cousins Henry 
and Robert, Earls of Oxford, incapable of dozing away their lives 
on the bed of sloth, seeking those scenes of action abroad which 
their own timid Prince could not afford them, and carrying arms to 
the powers contending on the continent. * * * 

"James, on his arrival in England, was both too fond of his 
amusements, and too ignorant of business, to take much of the man- 
agement of public affairs on himself; while the dependents and 
companions he brought with him were equally incompetent, being 
men of pleasure, inexperienced, in concerns of state, and intent only 
on gathering the golden harvests of private fortune, which they saw 
within their grasp. The government of the nation, therefore, wa? 
suffered for some time to continue in the hands of the former min- 
istry. Lord Buckhurst remained at the head of the treasury ; that 
able politician Cecil kept his post of secretary of state ; and Eger- 
ton still presided over the court of chancery. The last luckily sur- 
vived through the greater part of this reign, to preserve the fame 
and integrity of that sacred Bench. But the two former died ear- 
lier ; and as James was now grown more confident, and his favour- 
ites more daring, the post which was vacated by the death of one 
of the most efficient and long'-exercised statesmen in Europe, waa 
filled in succession by those minions, Carr and Yilliers. It is ap- 
parent that the old nobility fled for the most part from a cf urt of 



TO LECTURE VI. 297 

needy, gaping, and upstart dependents, of splendid poverty, coarse 
manners, and lazy and inglorious amusements." 

Preface, p. 18. 



Note 9.— Page 268. 

" Every thing concurred, in the Elizabethan era, to give a vig- 
our and a range to genius, to which neither prior nor subsequent 
times have been equally propitious. An heroic age, inflamed with 
the discovery of new worlds, gave increased impulse to fancies en- 
riched by access both to the recovered treasures of ancient litera- 
ture, and the wild splendours of Italian fiction. A command of 
language equal to the great occasion was not wanting. For what 
is there in copiousness or force of words, or in clearness of ar- 
rangement, or in harmony or grandeur of modulation, which Spen- 
ser at least has not given proofs that that age could produce T" 

Sir Egerton Brydges' ^''Excerpta Tudoriana." 

* * " There was much in the times of Queen Elizabeth that was 
propitious to great mtellectaal development. The English lan- 
guage was then well-grown ; it was not only adequate to the com- 
mon wants of speech, but it was affluent in expressions, which had 
become incorporated into it from the literature of antiquity. An- 
cient learning had been made, as it were, part of the modern mind 
of Europe ; and in England, under Elizabeth, the great universi- 
ties, which during the reigns immediately before, had suffered from 
violence that penetrated even those tranquil abodes, were gathering 
anew their scattered force. There was scattered, too, through the 
realm the popular literature of the minstrelsy, familiar, in its va- 
rious forms, upon the highways and in the thoroughfares, and by 
the fireside in the long English winter evening. The language was 
not only enriched by phraseology of ancient birth, but it had also 
gained what was more precious than aught that could come from 
the domains of extinct paganism — for the word of God had taken 
the form of English words, and thus a sacred glory was reflected 
upon the language itself. The civil and ecclesiastical condition of 
the country was also favourable to intellectual advancement, foi 
there was in abundance all that could cheer and animate a nation's 



298 NOTES 

heart. There was the romantic enthusiasm of early expeditions to 
remote and unexplored regions ; there was repose after the agony 
of ecclesiastical bloodshedding ; and whatever feverish apprehen- 
sion remained of foreign aggression or domestic discord, there was 
the proud sense of national independence and national power ; the 
moral force greater even than the physical. Spiritual subserviency 
to Rome was at an end, and England was once more standing upon 
the foundations of the ancient British Church. It was the meet 
glory of such an age, that there arose upon it, as the sixteenth cen- 
tury w^as drawing to a close, in succession, the glory of the genius 
of Edmund Spenser and of William Shakspere. The intellectual 
energy of the times is shown by the- large company of the poets : 
a list of two hundred English poets assigned to what is usually 
styled the Elizabethan age, is thought by Mr. Hallam (History of 
Literature) not to exceed the true number. What is yet more 
characteristic of an age of thought and of action, is the fertility of 
dramatic literature. In a quotation from Hey wood, one of Shaks- 
pere's contemporaries, given by Charles Lamb, (in his '■Specimens,^) 
it appears that Heywood had ' either an entire hand, or at the least 
a main finger' in 220 plays, much the greater number of which has 
perished. Such was one of the ways in which, as in the palmy 
age of the Athenian drama, the activity of the times was finding at 

once utterance and relief." 

MS. Ijectures on English Poetry. 



Note 10.— Page 269 

* * "So it is that all things come best in their season; that po 
utical power is then most happily exercised by a people, when it 
has not been given to them prematurely, that is, before, in the nat- 
ural progress of things, they feel the want of it. Security for per- 
son and property enables a nation to grow without interruption ; in 
contending for this, a people's sense of law and right is wholeson;e- 
ly exercised ; meantime, national prosperity increases, and brings 
with it an increase of intelligence, till other and more necessary 
wants being satisfied, men awaken to the highest earthly desire of 
the ripened mind — the desire of taking an active share in the great 
Work of government. The Roman commons abandoned the high- 



TO LECTURE VI. 299 

est magistracies to the patriciaas for a period of many years ; but 
they continued to increase in prosperity and in influence, and what 
the fathers had wisely yielded, their sons in the fulness of time ac- 
quired. So the English house of commons, in the reign of Ed- 
ward III., declined to interfere in questions of peace and war, as 
being too high for them to compass ; but they would not allow the 
crown to lake their money without their own consent ; and so the 
nation grew, and the influence of the house of commons grew along 
with it, till that house has become the great and predominant powei 
in the British constitution." 

History of Rome., vol. i., 343. 

Dr. Arnold, in one of his letters, speaks of the historical Essay 
in his Thacydides, (Appendix No. 1,) as " a full dissertation on the 
progress of a people towards liberty, and their unfitness for it at an 
earlier stage." (No. 25,) 



Note 11.— Page 271. 

" The aristocratic al hatred against Socrates is exhibited in the 
Clouds of Aristophanes ; and the famous speech of Cleon on the 
question of the punishment of the revolted Mytileneans, shows the 
same spirit in connection with the strong democratical party. Polit- 
ical parties are not the ultimate distinction between man and man ; 
there are higher points, whether for good or evil, on which a moral 
sympathy unites those who politically are most at variance with 
each other ; and so the common dread and hatred of improvement, 
of truth, of principle — in other words, of all that is the light and 
life of man, has, on more than one occasion, united in one cause all 
who are low in intellect and morals, from the highest rank in socie- 
ty down to the humblest." 

History of Rome, vol. i.,p. 346, note. 

Note 12.— Page 274. 

"The Jesuits cannot be accused of neglecting to give information 
on physical subjects to their scholars. Nor does it appear that they 
attempted to restore old theories on these matters, or to teach any 



500 KOTES 

Other opinions than those which had the general sanction of philoso- 
phers in their day. As the Dominicans and the Franciscans were 
£he means of reversing the papal decree against Aristotle, so it seems 
as if the Jesuits had practically reversed the decree against Galileo, 
rather eagerly availing themselves of the direction which men's minds* 
were taking towards physical inquiries, to turn them away from inqui 
ries into subjects more immediately concerning themselves. Here 
as elsewhere, their instniction proceeded upon one principle, and it 
cne regular, coherent system. Teach every thing, be it physics, 
history, or philosophy, in such wise that the student shall feel he is 
not apprehending a truth, but only receiving a maxim upon trust, 
or studying a set of probabilities. Acting upon this rule, they could 
publish an edition of the ' Principia,' mentioning that the main doe- 
trine of it hadbeen denounced by the Pope, and was therefore to be 
rejected ; but, at the same time, recommending the study of the 
book as containing a series of very ingenious arguments and appa- 
rent demonstrations. There was no curl of the lip in this utterance, 
strange as it may seem to us, nor, in the sense we commonly give 
to the word, any dishonesty. The editors did not believe that New- 
ton had proved his point. They had not enough of the feeling of 
certainty in their minds, to think that any thing could be proved. 
All is one sea of doubts, perplexities, possibilities ; the great neces- 
sity is to feel that we cannot arrive at truth, and that therefore we 
must submit ourselves to an infallible authority. This was the 
habit of their mind ; whether it was a true one or no the religious 
man will be able to resolve when he has considered its effects in 
producing the scepticism of the eighteenth century ; the scientific 
man, when he thinks how hopeless of progression those who cherish 
it must be." 

Maurice's 'Kingdom of Christ j' part ii. ch. v sect. 5. 

The following is the remarkable note, which Professor jMauricc 
alludes to, and which was prefaced by the Jesuit Commentatcrs *.m 
She ' Principia,' to iTie Edition published by them in 1742 : 

" PP. Le Seur et Jacquier 
Declaratio. 
Newtonus in hoc tertio Libro Telluris motas hypothesira assumet. 
Autoris Propositiones aliter explicari non poterant nisi ecldem quO' 



TO LECTURE VI. 301 

^ue facta hypothesi. Hinc alienam coacti sumus gerere personam. 
Casterum latis a summis Pontificibus contra Telluris motuin Decretis 
nos obsequi profitemur." 

Note 13.— Page 276. 

* * " iv i.iiv yap eipt'ivr} Kal ayaOols ■Kpayixaaiv a" rt ndXetg kul ol ISiSrai AfxeC' 
vovs Tag yviifxas £)(^ov(n 6id to //>j £S aKovalovg avdyKas ttctztsiv' b Ss irdXsixos v(ps\ui>» 
TT}V chnopiav tov Kad^ fjjxtgav [iiaios SiSddKaXos, Kal irpug to. napovra rag dpyag t&v 
jToWoiv h{iOio7." 

"War," (in Dr. Arnold's version of the last phrase,) "makes 
men's tempers as hard as their circumstances." Hist, of Rome, 
ch. 21. 

In the historical Essay appended to his Edition of Thucydides, 
Dr. Arnold remarks, " that the great enemy of society in its present 
stage is war : if this calamity be avoided, the progress of improve- 
ment is sure .; but attempts to advance the cause of freedom' by the 
sword are incalculably perilous. War is a state of such fatal in- 
toxication, that it makes men careless of improving, and sometimes 
even of repairing their internal institutions ; and thus the course of 
national happiness may be cut short, not only by foreign conquest, 
but by a state of war poisoning the blood, destroying the healthy 
tone of the system and setting up a feverish excitement, till the dis- 
order terminates in despotism." Yol I. p. 522. Appendix 1 



Note 14.— Page 278. 

The mind of Arnold was so deeply imbued with the Greek phi- 
losophy, that in following his thoughts in this Lecture, it is neces- 
sary to understand what was the nature of that democratic aKoXacia, 
which he and the bes+ of those ancient philosophers abhorred no 
less than tyranny in its other forms of selfish aristocracy or oli- 
garchy. With his favourite Aristotle Arnold sympathized strongly in 
aversion to absolutism, whether it be the uncontrolled power of one 
or of a few, or of the many, and in the deep reverence for the su- 
premacy of law over will. 

The nature of uKoXaaia as a vicious condition of individual life, is 
discussed with characteristic precision by Aristotle, {Ethic. Nic. 



302 NOTES 

Book VII. in several chapters.) It is tlie very opposite of that 
well-regulated, disciplined, and wisely-tempered condition of mind 
described by the term crufpoavvri. The aK.o\aoia is also, with the finest 
precision of ethical science, distinguished from the aKpacia, moral 
powerlessness, want of self-command; the aKparos is feeble or help- 
less in resisting passions — in withstanding temptation — a fool of 
passion or of impulse, while the aKdXaaros, the ujichastened, is wicked 
willingly — he goes wrong, not by the mere sway of passion or the 
negative absence of moral principle, but knowingly, habitually, pur- 
posely : he marks out for himself a course of vicious pleasure or 
excessive indulgence, and then as a matter of deliberate choice he 
follows it up for its own sake, even more than for any return it 
brings him in the way of sensual gratification — b [xh rai vxEp^oXai 

^i(j\KU)v TU)V ^6i(3}Vy T) Kad^ {)7rsp/?oXaj, rj Sia irpoaiptaiv Kal dt' avras, Koi jjiTjSev 5i 

hspov aiTo^aivov, dKoXaaros. To apply to this pagan ethical term worda 
that a Christian poet has put into the mouth of Archbishop Chichely, 
the aKoXaaia is the ' unwhipt olFending Adam.'* The anoXama is 
viciousness deliberate and of choice, while the aKpaaia is rather 

without any settled principle of vice to ynv yap, zapa Trpoaipsaiv, rb Si 

Kara irpoaiptaiv hriv. In the character of FalstafF, for instance, that 
which is erroneously regarded as cowardice, is a complete illustra- 
tion of oLKoXaaia in One of its forms, while the genuine cowardice of 
Pistol or Parolles is uKpaaia. Of this latter quality the character of 
Macbeth is also a specimen, at least during the early part of his de- 
pravity : the character of lago, on the other hand, is 'one of the most 
intense exhibitions ever given by poetic invention, of the uKoXaaia — 
that corruption of conscience denounced in the prophet's words : 
" Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness 
for light, and lig^t for darkness !" This wilful perversion of principle 
— moral disorganization — was signally shown in many of the promi- 
nent men in the French Revolution, and it was after being an eye-wit- 
ness of the advance of that convulsion to its extreme of wickedness, 
that the character of Oswald' in Wordsworth's tragedy of" The Bor- 
derers" was conceived, under a deep sense of ' the awful truth that 
there are no limits to the hardening of the heart, and the perversion 

* " Consideration like an angel came, 

And whipped the offending Adam out of him." 

Henry the Fifth: Act 1. 1 



TO LliCTURE VI. 303 

of the understanding to which sin and crime may carry their slaves.' 
The condition of the aKdXauTos was regarded as desperate too by the 
Greek moralist — ifi/xivsi yap rij -rrpoatpiaei — the disease is "incurable, for 
't is inveterate by lack of discipline, and by choice and habit — avdyKti 
yap TovTcv jxti tlvai peraixcXrjTiKdv' wcrr' avUaros — remorsc and reformation are 
impossible, for the vice is not mere passion, but it is a principle ; it 

is cold-blooded iniquity, naprl 51 civ So^sce %£fpa)^ eJvat, EL rts ixi] imdvixQv, 
$ tipefia irpaTTOi tl alaxpov >} el q<p65pa imOvpiov' Kal el p7i Spyi^dptvoi tvtttoi, r) el 
ipyi^ontvos' . ... Sib 6 aK6\aaTog ^^'/JCdi' tov aKparovs, (' Etkic. Nic.'' Book 

VII. ch. 8.) This utter hopelessness of restoration, while it shows 
the strong view which the Greek moralist took of the aKoXa^ia, illus- 
cra^es also how the highest heathen philosophy in its ethics reaches 
limits which are transcended by Christian morals. 

Now let us pass to the political dKoXaala, and the reproach on this 
account to which Dr. Arnold alludes as having been cast by Greek 
writers on the democracies. His favourite Herodctus Q Thalia,'' 
80-83) relates a discussion concerning the form of government to 
be established when the Persian throne became vacant by the death 
of Cambyses : Otanes proposes a democracy, but Megabyzus replies 
that to transfer the powder to the multitude — to ttXyjOos — would be 
missing the wisest plan, for that nothing is more empty of under- 
standing — d^vveruTepov — or more full of outrageous insolence — {>(3pia' 
Tdrepov — than the good-for-nothing crowd — hptXov dx(>r)iov — and that it 
was not at all to be tolerated that, when men escape from the vio- 
lence of a despot, they should falj upon that of the licentious people 
— 6npov dKo\d(TTov. Again, this vice is brought into close connection 
wath the democracies by Xenophon — if the authoi* of this treatise — 
(Rep. Ather , i. 5,) where he speaks of the contrast between the 
government by the better sort and that by the common people — 

£v yap ToXi ^eXriffToig evi aKoXaaia re dXiyiarr] Kal dSiKia, aKptPeia Se irXeiaTT] 
Kal els TO. ^priard' £v 6t rw S/jpcp dpadla re TtXeiffTT] Kal dra^ia Kai izovqoia — 

licentiousness {dKoXaaia) being in contrast with ' scrupulous regard 
for what is right.' Plato, {Rep. viii.) without perhaps using the 
term dKoXaaia throughout the whole book, is yet describing the thing 
Itself, as existing in a democracy which gives indiscriminate license 
—c^ovaia voiuv b ti tis (iovXerai — where there is great talk about liberty 
—and the acolastic defilement of the conscience manifests itself in 
moral misnomer — the calling evil good — dvap)(^iav plv iXevdepiav icaXovv 



304 NOTES 

rej, avaiSeiav Si, afSpLav k. t. X., lawlessness liberty, and impudeiico 
manliness, &c. — where there is a want of respect for age, and au- 
thority, and 'station — the son making himself equal to the father^ 
neither honouring nor fearing — [iijrs alax^vtaQai iitjTeSeSihai — his parents 
• — the pupil treating the teacher with contempt — and the resident 
alien— /ifVoiKos— putting himself on a level with the citizen — and where 
the father is under the controul of his boys— and the teacher stands 
in awe of his scholars, and pays court to them, and old men play 
the young man, for fear of seeming strict and authoritative — dv^eh 
•j.r]bs SecriTOTiKoi — Aristotls describes in various passages the kinds of 
democracy in which the di:o\a<ria prevails — when for instance the 
multitude has the mastery over the laws— Sttot; to ttXtiOos KipLov twv vdfiusv 
— and the equality is by numbers and not by worth — kut' dpidfiop 
and not kut d^iav — and justice is made to mean whatever the ma- 
jority please koI 5 n av Sd^r] rots TrXecocri, tovt cTvai to SiKaiov — whenever 

the supremacy of the constitution is made to yield to mere votes or 
decrees, which is brought about by the demagogue who corrupts the 
popular government as the flatterer spoils a king — otuv to. 4'^(pi<7ixaTa 

Kvpia 7], dXka ixfj h vofios . . . Sttou 5' oj vdnoi /ijj slai Kvpioi, tvTavda yivovTai Sriixayuyol 

— the supremacy of the multitude over the law being encouraged 
for selfish purposes by the demagogue, who makes every thing a 
subject of direct appeal to the people, whose opinion at the same 

time he can fashion or controul — diTioi Se h<n tov zlvai tu ^rjcpiajxara Kvpta, 
aXXd [Jifi Tolg v6ixois, ovroi, navTa dvdyovTts sis tov 6rj[iov . cyvjx^aivu yap avToli 
yh'tadai [icydXois, Sid to, tov [xiv Sfjuov eJvai Kvpiov, ttj? Ss tov Stjiiov Sd^rj?, tovtois - 

nddcTai yap to ifXriQos tovtois. {PoUt. iv. 4.) This is that absence of law 

which destroys a polity — orrou ydp nh v6i.ioi dpxova-i, ovK IcTTi TToXiTda. In 

the fifth book, (ch. 7,) Aristotle shows that the character of the 
polity is preserved only by the presence of law, and that it may be 
destroyed when the principal element of it is pushed to excess — 

roXXd ydp t&v SoKovvruiv 5tiiiotlko)v Xvei tus Srip.oKpaTLas . . . 0\ S oldixevoi Tat/rjji 

uvai jxlav dpirrjv^ eXkovoiv ds r)> 'vntp^oXriv, and it is of this that the Stagy- 
rite gives his homely illustration of the -nose, which may deviate 
Bomewhat from the most perfect form — the straightness of which is 
-jiost beautiful, (the Grecian,) — rfiv evOvTrjTa Tfiv KaXXiarvv — and become 
a little curved or depressed — -rrpbs to ypvirbv ^ r3 cinbv — without losing 
its beauty and grace, but it may become such a beak, or so flat, as 
aot to look like a nose at all — wctte urjSe p7va -noiriaai (paivcaOaL. This is 



TO LECTURE VI. 305 

just what happens, adds Aristotle, in governments, when their due 
proportions are lost, and the predominant element is carried to ex- 
cess, so that whether it be lawless oligarchy or lawless democracy, 
it is hideous political deformity. In another passage Aristotle has 
shown how when a popular government becomes extravagantly 
democratic, intractable licentiousness will surely engender tyranny 

1 — EK StjiiOKpariai rrji vtaviKMTdTTjs . . . ycverai Tvpavvig. (Book iv. ch. 9.) 

The oKoXac-ia that Dr. Arnold refers to as the vice of the ancient 
democracies, appears then to have been the undisciplined, ungov- 
ernable condition of deliberate and habitual lawlessness, taking this 
word, however, not in a mere negative sense, but rather as describ- 
ing that state of things where men make a law of their own passions 
' — impatient of authority, human or divine — what Milton calls the 
"senseless mood that bawls for freedom," but meaning "license 
when they cry liberty." The democratic uKoXama that is referred 
to in the text, can be briefly and fitly defined, only with an ana- 
chronism, as unchastized, systematic Jacobinism. 

Note 15.— Page 279. 

In connection with this eloquent passage, there should be read, 
for either original or renewed enjoyment of one of the noblest 
pieces in English historical literature, the well-known character of 
Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland — " the incomparable," in Clarendon's 
history. Dr. Arnold's biographer has well shown the peculiar 
sympathy that was felt with Falkland by Arnold, and indeed for 
any one who can find in history something more than a record of 
national events — of the aggregate action of courts and armies- 
something to feed the sense of admiration with, there is in the 
character of Falkland, dying young as he did in battle, and in a 
disastrous cause, a combination of worth that has given an almost 
romantic glory to his name : the Christian statesman, scholar, and 
soldier — a loyalist in the true and noblest sense of the title, up- 
lolding the law against the monarch and with the monarch — his 
short life, a sad and strenuous one, has left the memory of heroism 
and martyrdom. It is a martyr's glory that Arnold gives to the 
memory of Falkland ; and what he thought of that glory, he has 
elsewhere said with fervid eloquence. 



306 NOTES 

" The conqueror and the martyr are alike God's instruments ; 
but it is the privilege of his conscious and willing instruments to be 
doubly and merely blessed ; the benefits of their work to others are 
unalloyed by evil, while to themselves it is the perfecting and not 
the corrupting of their moral being ; when it is done, they are not 
cast aw^ay as instruments spoiled and worthless, but partake of the 
good which they have given, and enjoy forever the love of men, and 
the blessing of God." 

History of Rome, chap, xxxviii. 

Note 16.— Page 281. 

There is not in these Lectures a passage more strikingly char- 
acteristic of the author, than this in which he expresses his doubt 
respecting the Athenian a-rpayndawr], and does not spare a rebuke to 
that meek citizen, good Isaac Walton. Indeed, it is hardly pos- 
sible, without a smile, to consider the contrast of the various virtues 
of the head-master of Rugby, and of the no less w^ell-honoured angler 
• — opposite merits which it will be better to comprehend under the 
charity of uncensorious, catholic judgment, than to set in opposition. 
It would be a pity too to discover asperity in Dr. Arnold's allusion 
to Walton, against whose inoffensive and sweet-spirited character 
the only writer who has ever uttered a harsh or unkind word was 
that fierce polemic Bishop Warburton. The contrast is indeed 
most remarkable — Arnold's impetuous temperament and undaunted, 
unfailing energy — painfully alive to what he regarded as social, or 
political, or ecclesiastical evil, and, though despondent of the power 
to remove or mitigate it, always earnest, prompt, and strenuous in 
putting into action all the ability he had at command : in the famil- 
iarity of correspondence with one of his family, he exclaims, " I 
must write a pamphlet in the holidays, or I shall burst." When 
Isaac Walton's lot was cast upon more troubled and evil days— • 
when the church and the state he was loyal to were tumbling down 
in the civil war, he appears to have shut up his shop in London 
and gone fishing. In revolutionary times, it was his vocation to 
suffer rather than to act. When the Covenanters marched into 
England in 1643, he writes, " This I saw, and suffered by it." He 
was faithful to the afflicted cause, and, powerless in helping or re- 



TO LECTURE VI. 307 

trieving it, he was uncomplaining. The good work he was reserved 
for was to record the " lives" of those pious men whose names 
still cluster round his memory. 

The aTrpayiJi6(n)vv of the Athenians, spoken of in the lecture, must 
be considered in its relation peculiarly to the national character of 
that people, and their political and social condition. The Corin- 
thians described them (Thucydides, b, i. 70) as a race of men who 
look upon quiet with nothing to do, as no less an affliction than hard- 
working business, so that if any one were to sum up their character 
by saying that they were born, neither to have any enjoyment of re- 
pose themselves, nor to let anybody else have it, he would £ay truly 

— ^vijL(popdv T£ ovx" ri<^(^ov rjav')(iav airpdyp.ova i) acf)(o\tav eiriirovov Sxtte ii rii 
ahroiis ^vveXihv (pairj necpvKavai inl ru3 [xijte avToiis £%££v »;(TtJ%JrtV [jirjre tovs aWovs 

av9pix)irovs idv, dpOds uv emoi. And Pericles, in his funeral oration, 
Makes it the peculiar glory of the Athenians, that they held the re- 
tiring citizen, the man who abstained from public and political work, 
to be not merely one who does not busy himself about matters — 
aTTpdyixova — but downright good-for-nothing — axpflov. 

When this propensity of Athenian character and society went on 
increasing, a different estimate began to be entertained of the re- 
tiring citizen, both by poet and philosopher, who with sarcastic or 
grave reproof did not fail to condemn the morbid excitement, the 
turmoil, the restless activity, the noXvirpayixoavvT] of political life ; and, 
indeed, the judgment to be pronounced upon the airpaynoaivr) must 
after all be only a relative one — relative chiefly to the state of so- 
ciety from which escape is sought. When the inordinate increase 
and corruption of the Athenian courts, with the six thousand * di- 
casts,' and three hundred court-days in the year, developed the 
full force of such a system, with a people who had a passion for 
litigation, and for whom the administration of law had a sort of 
dramatic interest, then seclusion became almost the only security 
■ — an imperfect one — for property, or liberty, or life. In his Aris- 
tophanes, in the introduction to ' The Knights,' Mr. Mitchell gives 
this account of the airpdynoveg — " While the poor, the idle, and the 
ricious, pour in by crowds for a gratuity thus easily obtained, 
(pay for attendance in the courts,) ^those of better circumstances 
either withdraw from the assembly altogether, or, if they take part 
ill its deliberations, fcrm so inconsiderable a minority, that all meaa- 



308 NOTES 

ures are carried vsy mere numbers, without any reference to in- 
telligence or property ; hence they say that those best qualified 
for the management of public affairs, finding that they can nei- 
ther initiate what their own wisdom would suggest, nor pursue 
what the prudence of others would recommend, retire in disgust, 
leaving the conduct of public affairs to men the least competent 
to direct them." p. xxviii. And at v. 259 of the same play, fee 
remarks, " Persons of a quiet unintermeddling disposition in Athens, 
had but one of three resources : to consent to be despised and 
trampled on ; to quit the place altogether, like the two fugitives in 
our author's ' Birds' — (^rjrovvTe t6itov anpdyyLova ; or ■''O console them- 
selves with a quotation from some satiric comedian. 

Kai aenvbs, idv ij jxed' 'iTzpwv aTrpayp.6vwv. Apollodorus " 

He describes them elsewhere (note, ' Wasps,'' 1042) as ' that small 
portion of the Athenian populace, who, shunning law and politics, 
wished to pursue quietly their own occupations,' and when the Poet 
promises, as a reward for the virtuous citizen, the odour of airpayfxotxvvTi 
— (' Clouds,' V. 1007,) ' S^wv Kal dzpayiJiocnivris' Mr. Mitchell adds, " To 
live in the odour of airpayp.oavvr] at Athens must have been almost as 
fortunate as dying in the odour of sanctity in the papal church." 

In his ' Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato,' Mr. Sewell, wh3 
has no disposition to extenuate the evils of the Greek democracies, 
says, " No privacy of life, no innocence, no abstinence from public 
business, {aTrpaynocvvt],) not even poverty, could guarantee an Athe- 
nian gentleman in the land of liberty from being dragged at any 
moment before a tribunal of his fellow-townsmen, and there com- 
pelled to plead his own cause in person, with fines, imprisonment, 
and death, staring him in the face ; and neither laws, oaths, evi- 
ience, nor records, affording him any solid ground on which to rest 
his defence." (Chap. 17.) In an admirable chapter (the 32d) in 
his ' History of Greece,' Bishop Thirlwall, with no disposition to 
magnify the evils of the ancient popular systems, shows how the 
retired citizen was the victim of judicial persecution, when the 
government w^as deeply corrupt, the tone of morals low, when liti- 
ga'ion was an epidemic disease, and the trade of the informer wae 



TO LECTURE VI. 309 

rife ; " The opulent citizens of timid natures and quiet habits, who 
were both unable to plead for themselves and shrank from a public 
appearance, were singled out as the objects of attack by the syco- 
phants who lived by extortion." . . . . " Some were prevented by 
timidity, or by their love of quiet, or by want of the talents, or 
the physical powers required for appearing as speakers in the as- 
sembly, or the tribunals, from taking a part in public business. 
Many, irritated or disheartened by their political disadvantages, 
kept sullenly or despondingly aloof from the git-at body of theii 
fellow-citizens, nourishing a secret hatred to the Constitution, and 
anxiously waiting for an opportunity of overthrowing it, and avenging 
themselves for past injuries and humiliation." It is of the judicial 
abuse that Xenophon (' Mem. Soc' ii. 9) represents the complaints 
of Crito — a citizen wishing to mind his own business, ' jSouXo^fVoi 
ra iavTov irpdrTciv,' but beset by the informers, who thought he would 
pay his money for the sake of a quiet life — '^Smv av apyvpiov reXlaaiy 
9 irpdyiiara ex^iv : Socrates advises defence by making reprisals — by 
retaliating in the way of ' information.' 

A curious expression of feeling respecting these opposite habits 
of aitpaynoavvT] and TroXv^pay/jioavvri occurs in a fragment of the Prologue 
to Euripides's ' Philoctetes :' the words are in the mouth of Ulysses, 
whose wisdom is reduced apud tragicos from the epic elevation to 
sheer, selfish cunning — he questions, with vexation, his own claim to 
the character of sagacity, considering how active and busy he had 
been, when he might have fared as well as the best, and yet lived 
• dirpay//(5vwf.' And in the myth which Plato introduces at the close 
of the tenth book of ' the Republic,' symbolizing the immortality of 
the soul by the doctrine of transmigration, the soul of Ulysses is 
represented as chancing to get the last right of making choice of 
its new life, but remembering its former toils, and having lost all 
ambition, it goes about for a long while in search of the life of a 
private man, who kept himself from public affairs — ^i6v dvSpbs 15i6tov 
inpdynovoi — and when at last, after a great deal of difficulty, it found 
one, lying any where and disregarded by every other soul of them j 
it gladly took this life for itself, and said that this was the very 
thing it would have chosen, if it had had the first choice. The 
fable seems then to teach that a life of dirpayijioavi/v was so rare that 
only one could be found — so little valued that it was sought for 



310 NOTEft 

only by one — and that one the last chooser — and th.it choosei 
Ulysses, of all souls in the (other) world ! 

The anpayixoavw (or dn-oXtraa) of Socrates was of another and 
higher kind than that which has been spoken of. He was with- 
held from taking his part in the Assembly and courts by the in- 
timations of his DcEmoiii (Plato, Ap. Soc. ch. 19,) and because he 
believed it to be his proper vocation to prepare others for perform- 
ing their political duties with intelligence and integrity. And this 
kind of oLTrpaynoavvr) he declared was such an object of admiration 
in the eyes of the three Judges of the Dead, that when they en- 
countered the soul of a private man — av^pbs 18lwtov, who had lived 
with integrity and truth — or especially that of a philosopher, 
who had heeded his own business, and not been universally and 

restlessly officious, rd ahrov Ttpd^avTOi, iral oil TTolvTrpayiiovfjaaVTog ev rS jS/cjj, 

they sent it applaudingly to the "Islands of the Blest." (Plato, 
'Gorgias,' ch. 82.) In the 'Memorabilia,^ (book iii. ch. 11.) Socra- 
tes is represented as playfully alluding to his own airpayixoavvr}, 
{smffKunTTOjv Tf]v avTov aTTpayixoavvrjv) — when Theodota (a woman whose 
morals were not as pure as her name) solicits a farther conference, 
the philosopher replies, that no leisure is left him by his public 
and private engagements — 'iSia wpayiiara Tvo'XXa kuI ^rjixbaia — meaning, 
however, his business as a moral teacher. 

The habit of retirement from public life may, therefore, be justi- 
fiable when it is prompted by a sense of higher duty — by the con- 
viction that it may give to a man better opportunity of benefiting 
his fellow-men — of preserving his power of doing good to his 
countr;-^ permanently. It may give rise to nice questions of duty, 
especially in popular governments, where every citizen has his 
political duties, though looking at them perhaps more in the light 
of privileges, he may lose the sense of obligation in them. The 
retirement, instead of being dutiful, may in some cases be proof 
rather of timidity, of effeminacy, or of selfishness. There may be 
a shrinking from public cares, for the sake of gratifying private 
indolence or pleasures, or from sheer indifference to national con- 
cerns. Horace Walpole in one of his letters tells a story of an 
English squire, who went out with his hounds during the battle of 
Edgehill. It is told of Goethe, I believe, that he was busy study- 
ing Chinese during the battle of Leipsic : he is, however, vindica- 



TO LECTURE TI. 311 

ted by his admirers from the imputation of indifference to national 
Interests, by reference to his indefatigable zeal in the arts of peace, 
ai^d the fidelity to his high functions as an artist. Another form 
of the anrpayfioavvT], excusable at least, if not justifiable, is the se- 
clusion from political life that has become desperately "vicious, 
though there is higher virtue in that better spirit which, whether 
in hope or despair, falters not, as standing " ever in the great Task- 
master's eye"" — such dutifulness as Thiiiwall in his History (chap. 
32) worthily applauds in Nicias, who, " though he saw and suffered 
from the defects of the government, served his country zealously 
and faithfully." Let me only add to a note which has already 
reached too great a length, that, on the subject of participation in 
public affairs or seclusion from them, there is no riame suggesting 
so much food for reflection as that of Milton. There is much, too, 
in the career of Walter Scott, and in the animating strains that 
burst from Southey and from Word sw^orth, in their mountain-homes, 
during a trying period of their country's history. 

Note 17.— Page 286. 

" Rumours of conspiracy and insurrection, sometimes false, but 
gaining credit from the notorious discontent, both of the old com- 
monwealth's party and of many who had never been on that side, 
were sedulously propagated, in order to keep up the animosity of 
parliament against the ejected clergy ; and these are recited as the 
pretext of an act passed in 1664, for suppressing seditious conven- 
ticles, (the epithet being in this place wantonly and unjustly insult- 
ing,) which inflicted on all persons above the age of sixteen, present 
at any religious meeting in other manner than is allowed by the 
practice of the Church of England, where five or more persons 
besides the household should be present, a penalty of three months' 
imprisonment for the first oflfence, of six for the second, and of sev- 
en years' transportation for the third, on conviction before a single 
justice of peace. This act, says Clarendon, if it had been vig- 
orously executed, would no doubt have produced a thorough ref- 
ormation. Such is ever the language of the supporters of tyranny ; 
when oppression does not succeed, it is because there has been too 
little of it. But those who suffered under this statute report very 



312 NOTES 

differently as to its vigorous execution. The gaols were filled, not 
only with ministers who had borne the brunt of former persecutions, 
but with the laity who attended them; and the hardship was the 
more grievous, that the act being ambiguously worded, its construc- 
tion was left to a single magistrate, generally very adverse to the 
accused. 

" It is the natural consequence of restrictive laws to aggravate 
the disaffection which has served as their pretext ; and thus to cre- 
ate a necessity for a legislature that will not retrace its steps, to 
pass still onward in the course of severity. In the next session, 
accordingly, held at Oxford in 1G65, on account of the plague that 
ravaged the capital, we find a new and more inevitable blow aimed 
at the fallen church of Calvin. It was enacted that all persons in 
holy orders, who had not subscribed the act of uniformity, should 
swear that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take 
arms against the King ; and that they did abhor that traitorous po- 
sition of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against 
those that are commissioned by him, and would not at any time en- 
deavour any alteration of government in church or state. Those 
who refused this oath, were not only made incapable of teaching in 
schools, but prohibited from coming within five miles of any city, 
corporate town, or borough sending members to parliament." 

Haixam's ' Const. History of England ^^ vol. ii. 472. 

* * " After the Restoration, Bunyan was one of the first persons 
who was punished for non-conformity. The nation was in a most 
unquiet state. There was a restless, rancorous, implacable party 
who would have renewed the civil war, for the sake of again trying 
the experiment of a Commonwealth, which had so completely and 
miserably failed when the power was in their hands. They looked 
to Ludlow as their General ; and Algernon Sidney took the first 
opportunity of soliciting for them men from Holland and money 
from France. The political enthusiasts who were engaged in such 
schemes, counted upon the sectaries for support. Even among the 
sober sects there were men who at the cost of a rebellion would 
gladly have again thrown down the Church Establishment, for the 
hope of setting up their own system during the anarchy that must 
ensue. Among the wilder some were eager to proclaim King Jesus, 



TO LECTURE VI 313 

and take possession of the earth as being the Saints to whom it 
was promised ; and some, (a few years later,) less in hope of effect- 
ing their republican projects than in despair and vengeance, con- 
spired to burn London : they were discovered, tried, convicted, and 
executed ; they confessed their intention ; they named the day 
which had been appointed for carrying it into effect, because an 
astrological scheme had shown it to be a lucky one for this design ; 
and on that very d-ay the fire of London broke out. In such times 
the Government was rendered suspicious by the constant sense of 
danger, and was led, as much by fear as by resentment, to severi- 
ties which are explained by the necessity of self-defence — not jus- 
tified by it when they fall upon the innocent, or even upon the less 

guilty." 

Southey'b ^Life of Bunyan ' 



LECTURE VII. 



h\ attempting to analyze the parties of oui history, I have 
purposely omitted, for the most part, the names of the indi- 
viduals who headed them. By so doing we keep the subject 
clear at any rate of mere personalities, and avoid shocking 
that large portion of our political feelings which consists of per- 
sonal likings or dislikings. But still how to describe even the 
abstract principles of two parties without indicating which on 
the whole we prefer, I confess I know not. For these prin- 
ciples are so closely connected with points of moral character,, 
that I do not see how we can even wish to be indifferent to 
them. I have endeavoured to show how in both parties they 
were mixed up together, partly good and partly evil, and if I 
have not done this faithfully in point of fact, then my state- 
ment is so far partial and unjust. But that certain principles 
in politics are in themselves good as the rule, and that others 
are bad as the rule, although not perhaps absolutely without 
exception, I can no more wish to doubt, than I would doubt 
in reading the contest between Christianity and heathenism, 
on which side lay the truth. 

Therefore in speaking of the Revolution of 1688, I can 
imply no doubt whatever as to its merits. I grant that, de- 
scending to personal history, we should find principles sadly 
obscured ; much evil must be acknowledged to exist in one 
party, much good or much that claims great allowance on 



316 LECTURE VII. 

the other, But to doubt as to the character of the Revolution 
itself, is to doubt as to the decision of two questions, which 
speaking to Englishmen, and to members of the church of 
England, I have no right, as I certainly have no inclination, 
to look upon as doubtful. I have no right to regard it as 
doubtful, whether our present constitution be not better than 
a feudal monarchy ; and whether the doctrine and discipline 
of our protestant church of England be not truer and better 
than those of the church of Rome. (1) 

We will suppose then the Revolution accomplished. King 
William and Queen Mary seated on the throne ; the Bill of 
Rights and the Toleration Act passed ; England and Scotland 
mostly at peace under the government of King William ; the 
party of King James still predominant in Ireland. What 
were now the principal parties in the kingdom, and what 
were their objects ? 

With one king on the throne in England and Scotland, and 
with another ruling in Ireland, and trying to recover the 
throne of Great Britian also, the main question at issue, and 
one to which all others were necessarily subordinate, was 
the maintenance or the overthrow of the Revolution. Judg- 
ing from the extraordinary fact that the Revolution had been 
effected almost, literally speaking, without bloodshed, w^e 
should have expected that the nation would have been almost 
unanimous in supporting it. But the debates in the conven- 
tion which had preceded the I'ecognition of William had made 
it plain that this was not the case ; and as every month 
which James passed in exile weakened the impression of his 
faults and increased the pity for his misfortunes, so his cause 
after the Revolution gained strength rather than lost it. The 
uarty which had been foremost in placing William on the 
throne, united in itself all the remains of the ancient puritans, 
and of all those who had formed the popular party in Charles 
the Second's time, together with many of those persons who 



LECTUIIE VII. 317 

are the great disgrace of this period of our history, persona 
who joined either party from motives of interest or ambition, 
when their opinions led them naturally the other way. The 
motto of all this party may be said to have been civil and re- 
ligious liberty ; their object was the maintenance of the 
power of parliament, and through it of the liberty of the sub- 
ject ; the putting down popery, and the allowing liberty of 
worship to those dissenters who differed from the church on 
points of government or discipline. Beyond this, as is well 
known, the notion of religious liberty was not then carried : 
and it is remarkable, that at this very time an act of parlia- 
ment was passed making the profession of unitarianism in all 
its forms penal ; so that it was not popery only which remain- 
ed exposed to the severities of the law. 

The party opposed to the one just described, contained 
within itself two remarkable divisions, which practically 
made such a difference as to constitute rather two distinct 
parties. For although both divisions looked upon the Revo- 
lution with dislike, yet one of them having a sincere love for 
the real protestant doctrine of the church of England, re- 
garded the return of a Roman Catholic king as a greater evil 
than the maintenance of the Revolution ; and besides, a large 
proportion of these, like the better part of the Royalists in 
the civil war, were no friends to absolute monarchy, and 
wished the parliament to exist, and to be powerful. The 
other party, or division of the party, whichever we choose to 
call it, was anxious at any risk to restore James ; the nominal 
protestants among them being in fact at the best such men 
us Lord Falkland had described in his days as labouring to 
Dring in an English though not a Roman popery, men whose 
whole sympathies were with the Romish system in doctrine 
and ritual, though they had not yet resolved to place the 
nead of their church at Rome. Their political principle? 
were as highly Ghibelin as their religious were Guelf : the 



318 LECTURE VH 

divine right and indefeasible authority of kings stood in theii 
belief side by side with the divine right and indefeasible au- 
thority of priests ; and had these two powers again come into 
conflict, half of the Jacobites probably would have stood by 
the one, and half by the other. 

Under these circumstances the maintenance of the Revo- 
lution was no doubt effected by this, that so far one division 
of the antipopular party went along with their opponents. 
But this was not only owing to the sincere and zealous pro- 
testantism of this division ; it was owing also to another point, 
which, whether we call it the wisdom or thie happiness of the 
Revolution, is at any rate one of its greatest excellencies and 
best lessons for all after ages. I mean that the Revolution 
preserved the monarchy, with all its style and dignity un- 
touched : it made William king, and not protector. The 
great seal was the same, the national colours remained the 
same, all writs ran in the same terms, all commissions were 
in the same form ; as far as all the common business of life 
was concerned, it was simply like the accession of a new 
king in natural succession, whose name was William instead 
of James. Now this is not a little matter. In France some 
years since the outward signs of Revolution were visible 
everywhere : old names of streets were hastily painted over, 
and might still be traced through the new names which had 
been written upon them : on all government offices, and on 
many shops and other buildings the fresh colour of the word 
royale showed that it had been but recently substituted for 
imperiale, as that had a little before succeeded to nationale. 
By all this the continuity of a nation's life is broken, and the 
deep truth conveyed in those beautiful lines of Mr. Words- 
^'orlh, — 

"•The child is father of the man, 
And I would wish my days to be, 
Bound each to each by natural piety »" 



LECTURE VII, 319 

a truth almost more important to be observed by nations than 
by individuals, is unhappily neglected. (2) But it is the 
blessing of our English history that its days are thus bound 
each to each by natural piety : the child has been the father 
of the man. And thus the old loyalist, whose watchword was 
church and king, saw that after the Revolution no less than 
before, the church and king were left to him : the church 
untouched in its liturgy, in its articles, in its government, in 
its secular dignity, and in its v^^'ealth : the king sitting on the 
throne of his predecessors, unchanged in semblance, un- 
changed in the possession of his legal prerogatives : still the 
sovereign of a kingdom, and not merely the first magistrate 
in the commonwealth. Nor can we doubt that this operated 
powerfully to reconcile men's minds to the settlement of the 
Revolution, theirs especially who are influenced mainly by 
■what strikes them outwardly, and wno found that the outward 
change was so little. 

The outward change was little, and yet what was gained 
by the Revolution and by the Act of Settlement which was 
passed a few years afterwards, was in importance incalcula- 
ble. The reigning sovereign was bound to the cause of free 
and just government, by the consideration that his title to the 
crown rested on no other foundation ; that there was a com- 
petitor in existence whose right on high monarchical principles 
was preferable to his own. Now, as the whole temptation 
of kings must necessarily be to magnify their own authority, 
any thing which counteracts this tendency in them must be 
good alike for their people and for themselves. And this 
was the case, except during the reign of Queen Anne, from 
the Revolution to the middle of the eighteenth century; if the 
king forgot the principles of the Revolution, he condemned 
himself and denied his own title to the throne. Nor was it a 
little thing to have established once for all as the undoubted 
doctrine of tlie constitution, that the rule of hereditary sue 



320 LECTURE VII. 

cession, like all others, admits occasionally of exception-:^ .* 
rare, indeed, — it is to be desired that they should be very 
rare, — one or two scattered up and down in the history ol 
centuries, — but yet clear and undoubted, and to the full as 
legitimate when they do occur as the rule which they set 
aside. The exception made at the Revolution and confirmed 
by the Act of Settlement is in force to this very hour ; for I 
need not say that if the rule of hereditary succession be in 
all cases binding, the house of Brunswick is at this moment 
usurping the rights of the houses of Savoy or of Modena ; for 
the princes of the house of Brunswick are descended only 
from a daughter of James the First, and except by virtue of 
the Act of Settlement they could not succeed to the throne 
whilst the heirs of a dausrhter of Charles the First were still 
living ; and such heirs exist, I believe, in more than one royal 
house in Italy ; to maintain whose rights to the British crown 
would be, notwithstanding, treason. 

A few years after the Revolution, King James's party was 
utterly put down in Ireland, and the three kingdoms were 
united under the authority of King William. The conquest 
of Ireland, for such it might almost be called, was followed 
by that famous penal code against the Roman Catholics, 
which was designed to keep them for ever in a state of sub- 
jection and humiliation. It is curious to observe one of the 
most oppressive of all codes enacted by a popular party, 
whose watchword, as I have said, was civil and religious lib- 
erty. It is curious, yet ought not for a moment to puzzle 
any one who is familiar with ancient history. The democ- 
racy of Athens put to death a thousand Mytileneeans of the 
oligarchical party, and confiscated the lands of the whole 
people. The injustice of the Athenian dominion over Lesbos 
may be questioned, or we may complain of the excessive 
severity of their treatment of the Mytilenseans ; but not surely 
of its inoonsistency with a sincere love of democratical prin- 



LECTURE VII, 32i 

D3ples of government. For the Mytilenssans in the one case, 
like the Irish Catholics in the other, had been the declared 
enemies of the popular cause ; the one in Athens, the other 
in England : and their treatment was that of vanquished en- 
emies and rebels, not of citizens. And as after the Myti- 
lensean revolt the people of Methymna were alone regarded 
by the Athenians as the free inhabitants of Lesbos ; so the 
{rish protestants were regarded by the English as the only 
Irish people : the Roman Catholics were looked upon alto 
gether as an inferior caste. The whole question, in fact, 
relates to the treatment of enemies or subjects, and not to that 
of citizens: and unjust wars or conquests or dominions are 
not more inconsistent with a popular government than with 
any other : because the popular principle is understood to be 
maintained only with regard to those within the common- 
wealth, and not to those who are without. They are not 
more inconsistent with one form of government than another, 
but I hope I shall not be supposed, therefore, to deny their 
guilt ; that remains the same, and is not affected by the 
question of consistency or inconsistency. 

Greeic history will enable us also to comprehend the feel- 
ings with which the popular and antipopular parties respect- 
ively regarded the great French war. The popular party 
felt towards France as the same party in Athens regarded 
Lacedsemon ; not merely as towards a national rival, but as 
towards a political enemy, who was leagued with their polit 
ical enemies at home to effect the overthrow of their actual 
free constitution. And as Thucydides* says of the aristo- 
cratical party of the Four Hundred, that although they would 
have been glad to have preserved, if possible, the foreign 
dominion and the political independence of Athens, yet they 
were ready to sacrifice these to Sparta rather than fall under 

* VIII. 91. 



3[22 LECTURE VfT 

the power of their own democracy ; (3) so we can under- 
stand what otherwise would be incredible and monstrous, the 
desertion of the alliance, the putting Ormona into Marlbo- 
rough's place, and the separate negotiations with France in 
1713. And, on the other hand, that the enmity of the popu- 
iar party was directed not against France nationally, but 
against the supporter of their domestic enemies, was shown 
by the friendly relations which subsisted between the two 
countries in the reign of George the First, when Philip of Or- 
leans was at the head of the French government, and France 
was no longer in league with the partisans of James. The 
war which afterwards broke out in 1740, appears to have 
arisen solely from national and European causes ; and the 
support which the French then afforded to the insurrection 
of 1745, was merely given as an effectual means of annoying 
a foreign enemy, and diverting the attention of the English 
from the great military struggle in the Netherlands. Ac- 
cordingly, we do not find that any party in England regard- 
ed France with favour in that war, or complained of the 
government except for a want of vigour and ability in thpir 
military and naval operations. 

The cause of the Revolution in France never at any time, 
1 believe, was otherwise than popular with the poorer classes; 
the peasantry no less than the poor of the towns were, with 
a few local exceptions, such as La Vendee and Bretagne, its 
zealous supporters. In England it was otherwise ; the 
strength of the friends of the Revolution lay in the middle 
classes, in the commercial class, and in the highest class of 
the aristocracy ; the lower class of the aristocracy, the cler- 
gy, and the poorer classes, were ranged together on the op- 
posite side. The main cause of this difference is to be found 
in the fact that the French Revolution was social quite as 
much as political : (4) ours was political only. The aboli- 
tion of the Seigneurial dominion in France, and the making 



LECTURE VII. 32Jj 

all Frenchmen equal before the law, were benefits which the 
poorest man felt daily : but the English Revolution had only 
settled great constitutional questions — questions of the utmost 
importance, indeed, to good government, and affecting in the 
end the welfare of all classes of the community, but yet 
working indirectly, and in their first and obvious character 
little concerning the poor ; while, on the other hand, the 
wars which followed the Revolution had led to an increased 
taxation. To this it must be added, that the mere populace 
is at all times disposed to dislike the existing government, be 
it what it will : and as the popular party retained the govern- 
ment in its hands for many years, the habitual feeling against 
all governments happened to turn against them. In countrv 
parishes the peasantry went along with the country gentle- 
men and clergy from natural feelings of attachment ; feelings 
which distress had not as yet shaken : while the town popu- 
lace, and the country populace also, so far as they knew 
them, disliked the dissenters both socially and morally ; so- 
cially, from the same feeling which at this moment makes it 
easier to excite the populace against the great manufacturers 
than against the old nobility : jealousy, namely, against those 
nearer to themselves in rank, yet raised by circumstances 
above tV«em ; and morally, from a dislike of their strictness 
and religious profession : the same feeling which urged the 
mob to persecute the first Methodists, and which is curiously 
blended with the social feeling. For religious language, 
even when amounting to rebuke of ourselves, is borne 
>nore readily, to say the least, when it proceeds from those 
who seem authorized to use it. Thus it gives less offence 
when coming from a clergyman than from a layman ; and to 
a poor man it comes more naturally from one whom he feels 
to be his superior in station, than from one more nearly his 
ec^ual. Partly in connection with this, is the greater tolera- 
lion shown by the Roman world to the Jews than to the 



£{24 LECTURE VII 

Christians ; the Jews seemed to have a right to believe in oikj 
God, because it was their national religion ; but what right 
had one Roman citizen to pretend to be wiser than his neigh- 
bours, and to profess to worship one God, because that and 
that alone was the truth ? From such feelings, good and bad 
together, the populace in Queen Anne's reign, and in that 
which followed, were generally averse to the dissenters and 
the popular party, and friendly to the clergy, and to the par- 
ty opposed to the Revolution. 

Meanwhile years passed on, and Jie house of Hanover was 
firmly seated on the throne ; on the deai.i of George the First 
his son George the Second succeeded him without the slight- 
est opposition ; a larger portion of the clergy, and a very 
large majority of the nation had learnt not only to acquiesce 
in, but to approve heartily of the principles of the Revolu- 
tion ; the victory of civil and religious liberty, as it was 
called, was completely won. Now, then, considering, as I 
have said before, that we have a right to ask for the fruits of 
liberty, just as we may ask for the fruits of health; (for 
while we are ill we give up our whole attention to the getting 
the better of our sickness ; and health is then reasonably our 
great object ; but when we are well, if instead of using our 
health to do our duty, we go on idly talking about its excel- 
lence, and think of nothing but its preservation, we become 
ridiculous valetudinarians;) even so, having a right to de- 
mand of men, when their liberty is secured, what fruits the}r 
have produced with it, let us even put this question to the 
triumphant popular party of the eighteenth century. And 
if we hear no sufficient answer, but only a mere repetition of 
phrases about the excellence of civil and religious liberty, 
then we shall do well not indeed to fall in love with the anti- 
popular party, and say that sickness is better than health, bul 
to confess with shame that the popular party has neitheT 
practised nor understood its duty ; that they laboured well 



LECTURE VII. 325 

10 clear the ground for their building, but when it was cleared 
they built nothing. 

Here seems to me to be the great fault of the last century : 
as in the eyes of many it is its great excellence ; that it was 
for letting things alone. (5) In some respects, indeed, it 
stopped its own professed work too soon ; for trade was not 
free, but burdened with a great variety of capricious restric- 
tions : sinecure places, and these granted in reversion, were 
exceedingly numerous : the press, had the disposition of the 
government been jealous of it, was still greatly at its mercy ; 
for as yet it remained with the judges only to decide whether 
a publication was or was not libellous : the business of the 
jury was merely to decide on the fact, whether the defendant 
had published it. (6) But with regard to institutions of the 
greatest importance, the neglect was extreme. The whole 
subject of criminal law and prison discipline was either left 
alone, or touched only for mischief. The state of the prisons, 
both physically and morally, was as bad as it had been in 
the preceding century ; the punishment of death was multi- 
plied with a fearful indifference ; education was everywhere 
wanted, and scarcely anywhere to be found. Persons are now 
living who remember the old state of things in this univer- 
sity, when a degree might be gained without any reading at 
^all : and the introduction of Sunday schools is also within living 
memory. It is not to be wondered at that attention should not 
have been turned immediately to these and many other points ; 
but still the principle of the age had no tendency to them : in 
political and ecclesiastical matters the work had been so long 
to get rid of what was bad, that it seemed to be forgotten that 
it was no less important to build up what was good ; and 
men's positive efforts seemed to run wholly in another direc- 
tion, towards physical and external advancement. (7) 

Then there arose in England, for I am now looking no far- 
ther, a new form of political party. It is well known that 



326 LECTURE VII. 

the administration of the first William Pitt was a period of 
unanimity unparalleled in our annals ; popular and aniipop- 
ular parties had gone to sleep together: the great minister 
wielded the energies of the whole united nation ; France and 
Spain were trampled in the dust ; protestant Germany saved ; 
all North America was the dominion of the British crown ; 
the vast foundations were laid of our empire in India. (8) 
Of almost instantaneous growth, the birth of two or three 
years of astonishing successes, the plant of our power spread 
its broad and flourishing leaves east and west, and half the 
globe rested beneath its shade. Yet the worm at its root was 
not wanting. Parties awoke again, one hardly knows how 
or why, and their struggle during the early part of the reign 
of George the Third was of such a character, that after study- 
ing it attentively, we turn from it as from a portion of history 
equally anomalous and disagreeable. Yet its uninstructive- 
ness in one sense is instructive in another ; and 1 will venture 
to call your attention to that period in which the most promi- 
nent names — alas ! for the degraded state of English party- 
are those of John Wilkes and of Junius. 

For the first time for nearly fifty years the king was sup- 
posed to be disinclined to the principles of the Revolution ; 
the great popular minister, Pitt, had resigned, and the minis- 
ter who was believed to be the king's pergonal favourite^ 
was believed also to be strongly attached to the principles 
of the old antipopular party. (9) These circumstances, tO' 
gether with some dissatisfaction at what were called the in- 
adequate terms of the peace whh France and Spain, revived 
party feelings in a portion of the community with much 
warmth. (10) The press became violent, and Wilkes's famous 
attack on the king's speech in No. 45 of the North Briton, 
drew down a prosecution from the government. He happened 
at that time to be a member of the house of commons ; and 
the house expelled him. I will not detain you with the detail 



LECTURE VII. 327 

of his case ; it is enough to say that having been elected as 
member for Middlesex after his expulsion, the house of com- 
mons would not allow him to sit : and when he again offered 
himself as a candidate, and nad obtained an enormous ma- 
jority of votes over his competitor, the house of commons 
nevertheless resolved that his competitor was duly elected, 
and he took his seat for Middlesex accordingly. 

The striking point in this new state of parties cannot fail 
to have attracted your notice : namely, that the house of 
commons is no longer on the popular but en the antipopular 
side ; and that the popular party speaks no longer by the 
voice of any legally constituted authority, but by that of in- 
dividuals, self-appointed to the service, and through the press. 
This was a great change, and, as I think, a change in some 
respects for the worse. But it is very important to dwell 
upon, because it is the result of a natural law, and therefore 
is constantly to be looked for, unless steps are taken to pre- 
vent it. We have noticed an instance of the same thing in 
our religious Reformation ; no sooner had the leaders of the 
English church make good their cause against Rome, than 
they became engaged in disputes with their own followers 
who wanted to carry on the Reformation still farther. But 
what was a reformation yesterday is become an establish- 
ment to-day ; and the reformer of yesterday is to-day the 
defender of an establishment, opposed in his turn to those 
who by wishing for farther reformation necessarily assail the 
reformation already effected. So when the house of commons 
had established the ascendancy of parliament against the 
crown, and through that ascendancy had no doubt secured 
also the liberties of the nation, they naturally stopped and 
thought that their work was done. Besides, for the last fifty 
years the crown had headed the popular party, and the efforts 
which the popular leaders had made, through the influence 
of the crown, to secure a majority against the influence of 



328 LECTURE Vll 

their opponents, had thus been all directed, whatever be 
thought of the means used, towards securing the triumph of 
popular principles, the principles, that is, of the Revolution, 
Things were wonderfully changed, when the crown was sup- 
posed to have gone over to the opposite side, and when its in- 
fluence was acting in concurrence with that very party which 
it had long been accustomed to combat. The popular party 
therefore no longer had the majority of the commons in its fa- 
vour ; but on trie contrary received from the house of commons 
its immediate reproof. Now while the house clearly led the 
popular cause, its acts of authority excited no ill will ; soldiers 
will bear any strictness of discipline from officers whom they 
thoroughly trust, and who are in the habit of leading them on 
to victory. But let it be once whispered that these officers 
are traitors, or that they are even lukewarm and inefficient 
merely against the enemy, and any severity of discipline is 
then resented as tyranny. So it was with the popular party 
out of doors, when the house of commons, now as they thought 
inclined to the interest of their opponents, began to set up 
their power of expulsion as controlling the elective fran- 
chise of their constituents. The representatives were thus 
placed in opposition to their constituents, as the antipopular 
party opposed to the popular : but the constituents were no 
legally organized body ; they were undistinguished, exc ept 
by their right of voting, from the whole mass of the nation ; 
nor was there in existence any constitutional power lower 
than the house of commons, which in this new struggle might 
be against the house of commons itself what that house had 
formerly been against the crown. The corporation of Lon- 
don attempted to supply this want, but in vain : it could not 
pretend to be a national, but merely a local body ; and London 
has never exercised such an influence over the country, as 
that the chief magistrate of London should be recog?iised as 
tlie po}>ular leader of England. The popular party then, as 



LECTURE VII. 329 

. have said before, having no official organ, spoke as it best 
could through self-appointed individuals, and through the 
press. (11) 

This changed state of things is one with which we are 
very familiar : a strong popular party out of parliament, and 
that great power of the public press, which with much truth 
as well as humour has been called the fourth estate of the 
realm, are two of the most prominent features of these later 
times. Both undoubtedly have their evils, but both are the 
natural and unavoidable consequence of the changed position 
of the house of commons on one side, and of the growth of the 
mass of the nation in political activity on the other. For 
there being, as I have said, no lower constitutional body 
which could be the heart as it were of the popular party, 
now that the house of commons had ceased to be so, it was a 
matter of plain necessity that the opposition should be car- 
ried on from the ranks of the people itself, in aid of that 
portion of the house of commons which upheld the same 
principles, but was, within the walls of parliament, a minor- 
ity. And as for the press, reading in our climates so natu- 
rally takes the place of hearing, and is so indispensable where 
the state is not confined within the walls of a single city but 
is spread over a great country, that it could not but increase 
in power as the number of those who took an interest in pub- 
lic affairs became daily greater. True it is that its power, 
as actually exercised, was liable to enormous abuse. The 
writers in the public journals were anonymous, and although 
the printer and publisher were legally responsible for the 
contents of their papers, yet the bad tendencies of anonymoua 
writing are many more than the sevei^est law of libel can re- 
press. The best of us, I am afraid, would be in danger of 
writing more carelessly without our names than with them. 
We should be tempted to weigh our statements less, putting 
forward as true what we believe indeed, but have no sufFicienI 



330 LECTURE VII. 

grounds for believing, to use sopliistical arguments with less 
scruple, to say bitter and insulting things of our ad versa rie? 
with far less forbearance. But then the writers for the pub 
lie journals have the farther disadvantage of always writing 
hastily, and in many instances of writing for their bread, so 
that whatever other qualities their articles may have or not 
have, it is necessary that they should be such as will make 
the paper sell. Again, a journal is a property; like other 
property it may be bequeathed, bought, and sold, and may 
thus pass into hands totally indifferent to all political princi- 
ples, and only anxious to make the property profitable. In- 
stead of guiding public opinion, such a proprietor will think 
it better policy to follow it and encourage it ; well knowing 
that to praise and agree with a man's opinions is a surer way 
of pleasing him than to attempt to teach him better. Even 
where this is not the case, and a journal is honestly devoted 
to the maintenance of a certain set of political principles, yet 
the writers in it, over and above the disadvantages already 
noticed, of haste and of writing anonymously, are many times 
persons ill fitted by education or by station in society to form 
the wisest judgments on political questions ; they have not 
knowledge sufficient to be teachers. All this is true ; and 
journalism accordingly has pandered abundantly to men's 
evil passions, has misled the public mind, many times, instead 
of leading it aright. And farther, there is always a danger 
that popular principles, when advocated spontaneously b}' 
individuals, and not by a regular constitutional body, should 
become somewhat in excess, should respect actual institutions 
too little, and should savour too much of individual extra/a. 
gance or passion. So that it would be an enormous evil if 
ever the popular party in the house of commons was so weak, 
«?hat the main stress of the contest should be carried on out 
of parliament, by speakers at public meetings or by the press. 
There is no question that something of this evil was felt in 



LECTURE VII. 331 

the lattei part of the eighteenth century ^ too much devolved 
on the popular party out of doors and on the press, because 
of the vast superiority of the antipopular party in parliament. 
But with all the evils of a political press, the question still 
recurs. What should we be without it ? Or how would it be 
possible otherwise to satisfy the natural desire of an active- 
minded people, to know the state of their own affairs ? And 
there is no question that reading is a less exciting process 
than hearing ; sophisms read quietly in our own house are 
less likely to mislead, than when commended by the eloquence 
of a popular speaker and the sympathy of a vast multitude, 
his hearers : what there is of mischief does less harm, while 
what there is of true information is better digested and better 
remembered. Again, whatever of sophistry and virulence 
there is in the public journals, yet this is partly neutralized 
as to its effects by their opposition to each other ; and while 
we allow for the existence of those faults, it is impossible to 
deny that the consequence of the system of extreme publicity 
is to communicate a great mass of real information, that the 
truth after all is more widely known and with less scandal- 
ous corruptions than it could be under any other system con- 
ceivable. 

The evil of the public journals of the eighteenth century 
was that of the political writing of the time generally, and it 
arose out of that fault to which I have already alluded, when 
1 said that the mere notion of civil and religious liberty was 
too exclusively worshipped by the popular party, to the neg- 
lect of the moral end which lay beyond it. And this unhappy 
separation of politics from morals, and from the perfection of 
morals, Christianity, was by no means peculiar to the popu- 
lar party, nor to the eighteenth century ; its causes lay 
deeper, and their consequences have been but too durable. 
In this respect, the existence of a church which was sup- 
posed to include the whole nation within its pale, and to take 



332 LECTURE VII. 

effectual care of their highest interests, was in some respects 
absolutely mischievous, when that church in practice was in- 
etficient and disorganized. For as if the state were thus re- 
lieved from all moral responsibility, it took less care, by its 
own regulations, for the moral excellence of its magistrates, 
than was taken by many a heathen commonwealth. The 
Roman censors expelled from the senate any man of scan- 
dalous life ; and though their sentence was reversible, yet a 
judicium turpe, or being found guilty, by a court of law, of 
any one out of a great variety of specified disgraceful offen- 
ces, deprived a man of his political privileges irrevocably ; 
he lost even his vote as a member of the comitia. (12) How 
different was the state of feeling in England, was but too 
clearly shown in the dispute as to the re-election of Wilkes, 
after the house of commons had expelled him. Politically, 
the subsequent decision of the house of commons, which is 
now considered to have settled, the question, seems perfectly 
just : the choice of a representative seems to belong to his 
constituents, within the bounds fixed by law ; and the judg- 
ment of his fellow representatives against him is not so 
much to the purpose as the renewed decision of those who are 
more immediately concerned, given in his favour. (13) Yet 
was the scandal extreme when a man of such moral charac- 
ter as Wilkes was made a popular leader, and when a great 
political principle seemed involved in choosing him to be a 
legislator. True it is that the opposite party had no right to 
complain of him, for the candidate whom they supported 
against him was in moral character nothing his superior ; it 
is a curious fact that both were members together in private 
life of that scandalous society whose meetings at Medmen- 
ham Abbey, between Henley and Marlow, were the subject 
at the time of many a disgraceful story. (14) But it was and 
is one of the evils of our state, that personal infamy is no bai 
to the exercise of political rights ; that a man may walk out 



LECTURE VII. 333 

of jail and take his seat in the highest places, even as a 
legislator. And this same moral insensibility makes us tole- 
rate the defects of the press in these points, when we sympa- 
thize with it politically ; because we are all accustomed too 
much to separate moral and political matters from each 
other ; one party thinking of liberty only, and another of au- 
thority ; but each forgetting what is the true fruit and object 
of both. 

As Wilkes was one of the worst specimens of a popular 
leader, so was Junius of a popular political writer. One is 
ashamed to think of the celebrity so long enjoyed by a pub- 
lication so worthless. No great question of principle is dis- 
cussed in it ; it is remarkable that on the subject of the 
impressment of seamen, which is a real evil of the most se- 
rious kind, and allowed to be so even by those who do not 
believe that it is altogether remediable, Junius strongly de- 
fends the existing practice. All the favourite topics of his 
letters are purely personal or particular ; his appeals are 
never to the best part of our nature, often to the vilest. If 
[ wished to prejudice a good man against popular principles, 
I could not do better than to put into his hands the letters of 
Junius. (15) 

But I have dwelt too long on this period of our history, 
and must hasten to conclude this sketch. The disputes 
about Wilkes's election were soon lost in a far greater mat- 
ter, the contest with America. In that contest the questions 
of our own former history were virtually reproduced ; for it 
is quite manifest that the British parliament stood to the 
American colonies in precisely the same relation in which 
the crown had formerly stood towards the people of Eng- 
land ; every argument for or against ship-money might have 
been pleaded for and against the Stamp Act. This Lord 
Chatham clearly perceived, and so far he was in agreement 
with the rest of the popular party. His opposition to the in- 



334 LECTURE VIT 

dependence of the colonies belonged to the personal charac- 
ter of the man, to his invincible abhorrence of yielding to 
the house of Bourbon, to his natural unwillingness to divide 
that great American empire which his administration had 
founded. But he struggled against a law altogether distinct 
from the question about taxation, a law of nature herself, 
which makes distance an insuperable obstacle to political 
union ; and when the time arrives at which a colony is too 
great to be dependent, distance making union impost ible with 
a mother country at the end of the earth, the only alterna- 
tive is complete separation. (16) 

In the various contests which followed, to the end of the 
century, the character of the popular party remained pretty 
nearly the same : its object might still be said to be civil and 
religious liberty ; the difference was that these objects were 
now often contended for for the sake of others, with whom 
Englishmen had no personal connection. And so paramount 
are political principles, when they seem really at stake, to 
any national sympathies or antipathies, that at the end of the 
century the feelings of our two great political parties with 
regard to France were exactly reversed from what they had 
been at the beginning of it, because France was become the 
representative of exactly opposite political principles. With 
perfect consistency therefore did the popular party deprecate 
and the antipopular party support the war with France in 
1793, as in 1703 the antipopular party had opposed it, and 
the popular party had been zealous in its favour. (17) 

It marks also the truth of the description which I gave of 
the later movement of Europe, calling it the political, as dis- 
tinguished from the religious movement of the preceding 
period, that political consistency led parties to alter their 
feelings towards the same religious party ; the popular party 
being zealous to undo that very penal code which their polit- 
ical ancestors had imposed on the Roman Catholics of Ireland, 



LECTURE VII. 335 

the antipopular party on the other hand vigorously maintain- 
ing it. Neither party were in the least inconsistent with 
their inherent political principles ; and the religious feelings 
which in the case of the Roman Catholics had a century ear- 
lier modiiied the political feeling, were now on both sides 
greatly weakened. 

The struggle then in this latter period of modern history, 
so far as England has been concerned, may be called a 
struggle for civil and religious liberty ; understanding liberty 
in a perfectly neutral sense, and not as a deliverance from 
evil and unjust restraint, but from restraint simply. And 
taking the word in this meaning, it seems to me that the 
statement cannot be disputed, that the object of one party 
during the eighteenth century was to unloose, the object of 
the other to hinder such unloosing ; it being a distinct ques- 
tion whether the bands thus sought to be taken off or retained, 
were just or unjust, useful or mischievous. And I think it 
is also certain that this object in the preceding period of 
modern history was combined with another of a more specific 
character, namely, the attainment of religious truth, which 
was on both sides a more positive object than the simply un- 
loosing or holding fast, and one more certainly to be called 
good. 

What has beeii exemplified from our own history, holds 
true I think no less with respect to Europe at large. Un- 
questionably whatever internal movement there has been on 
the continent since 1648, has been predominantly political ; 
undoubtedly also the object of that movement has been gen- 
erally to unloose, to remove certain restraints external or 
internal ; and the object of those opposed to that movement 
has been to maintain these restraints or to add to them. 

It would appear that this view of the question will enable 
us easily enough to account for the disappointment with 
which, whatever be our political opinions, we must rise from 



336 LECTURE VII. 

ihe study of this period of political movement. Disappoint- 
ment, because evils great and unquestioned still exist abun- 
dantly, evils which both parties have failed to prevent. Those 
who advocate the side of the movement, when taunted with 
the little good which has resulted from their political suc- 
cesses, besides being at issue with their opponents as to the 
amount of good produced, might fairly acknowledge that the 
movement was essentially defective, that its object ought not 
to have been merely negative, that although to do away evil 
and unjust restraints is good, yet that our views should be 
carried much farther ; we are unjust to our own work if we 
take no care that liberty shall be to all men's eyes the mother 
of virtue. And on the other hand they who sympathize with 
the party which strove to hold fast the restraints, if they say 
that the mischief has resulted wholly from their own defeat, 
are yet required to account for the very fact of that defeat ; 
and they too may acknowledge that to restrain a child or to 
confine a lunatic is not all that their cases need : that re- 
straint is but a means no less than liberty ; and that when 
man exercises it upon man, he is bound to show that it is a 
means to work the good of the person restrained, or else it is 
an injustice and a sin. Now it is past all doubt that the 
antipopular party, both religious and political, have here 
greatly failed ; considering the people as children, they have 
restrained the child, but they have not educated him ; con- 
sidering them even as lunatics, they have confined the luna- 
tic, but have often so irritated him with their discipline as 
to make his paroxysms more violent and more incurable. 

Farther also, as to the judgment we should form of the 
struggle of the last three centuries, it is manifest that it de- 
pends in some measure on our judgment of the centuries 
preceding them. If all was well in those preceding centuries, 
the movement, whether religious or political, must have been 
undesirable ; for certainly all is not well now. If all was ili 



LECTURE VII. 3o7 

in those preceding centuries, then certainly the movement 
has been a great blessing ; for our present state is blessed 
with very much of good. But it was neither all well nor all 
ill ; so much the most superficial knowledge may teach us : 
the question to decide our judgment is, whether it was ill or 
well predominantly. 

In most other places it would be considered extraordinary 
to represent such a question as doubtful for a moment. But 
here there is always a tendency to magnify the past : five- 
and-twenty years ago I can remember that it was the fashion 
to exalt the seventeenth century at the expense of the eigh- 
teenth : now I believe many are disposed to depreciate both, 
and to reserve their admiration for times still more remote, 
and more unlike our own. It is very well that we should not 
swim with the stream of public opinion : places like this are 
exceedingly valuable as temples where an older truth is still 
worshipped, which else might have been forgotten : and some 
caricature of our proper business must at times be tolerated, for 
such is the tendency of humanity. But still if we make it our 
glory to run exactly counter to the general opinions of our age, 
making distance from them the measure of truth, we shall at 
once destroy our usefulness and our real respectability. And 
to believe seriously that the movement of the three last cen- 
turies has been a degeneracy ; that the middle ages were 
wiser, or better, or happier than our own, seeing truth more 
clearly and serving God more faithfully ; would be an error 
so extravagant that no amount of prejudice could excuse us 
for entertaining it. (18) 

It has been my object in this and in my last lecture to ex- 
emplify from that history which is most familiar to us all, the 
method of historical analysis ; by which we endeavour to 
discover the key as it were to the complicated movement of 
the world, and to understand the real principles of opposite 
parties amidst much in their opinions and conduct that js 

29 



338 LECTURE VTI. 

purely accidental. I believe that the result of the analysis 
now made, is historically correct ; if it be otherwise, I have 
managed the experiment ill, and it has failed m this particu- 
lar instance ; but the method itself is no less the true one, and 
you have only to conduct it more carefully in order to make 
it completely answer. In a brief review of a period of three 
centuries, I have made so many omissions that my sketch 
may seem to be superficial ; and I grant that this is always 
the danger to be apprehended in our generalizations, and one 
which when speaking of a period so busy it is not easy to 
avoid. To be acquainted with every existing source of in- 
formation illustrative of the last three centuries is of course 
physically impossible, while human life is no longer than it 
is : the only question is, or else all our reading must be use- 
less, whether by a tolerably large and comprehensive study 
of a variety of sources we may not gain a notion substantially 
correct, which a still more extensive study, if such were prac- 
ticable, would confirm and enrich, but would not materially 
alter. 

What I have now attempted to do briefly for a long and 
very busy period, I shall endeavour to do next year, if God 
shall permit, at greater length for a shorter period, namely, 
for the fourteenth century. Whoever has already made that 
period his study, or shall do so in the course of this year, may 
find it not uninteresting to compare the result of his inquiries 
with mine, and if he shall learn any thing from me he may 
be sure also that he might impart something to me in return, 
of which I was ignorant. For in this wide field there is full 
work for many labourers, and it is my hope that many of us 
may thus co-operate, and by our separate researches collect 
what no one man could have collected alone. In the mean 
while, my next and last lecture will be devoted to one or 
two more general matters ; such particularly as the criteria 
of historic credibility, a question naturally of great import 



LECTURE VII. 339 

ance, because unless we can discriminate between a ci edible 
testimony and a suspicious one, we shall never be able to 
avoid the evil either of unreasonable scepticism or of unrea- 
sonable credulity. And the result of such an inquiry will 
be what we could most wish ; that there is an historical truth 
attainable by those who truly desire it, however easily and 
indeed inevitably missed by the unfair or even the careless 
historian, whatever may be his external advantages. This 
question, with one or two points connected with it, will be 
almost more than sufficient to occupy the time which we shall 
be able to afford to them. 



NOTES 

TO 

LECTURE VII 



Note 1.— Page 316. 



Coleridge has spoken of " the revolution" as "wise and ne- 
cessitated confirmation and explanation of the law of Englandj 
erroneously entitled the English Revolution 0/1688." — ' The Friend^ 
iii. p. 130 ; and again, in the ^Tahle Talk,'' ii. p. 172 : " The great 
reform brought into act by and under William the Third, combined 
the principles truly contended for by Charles the First and his 
Parliament respectively." 

Note 2.— Page 319. 

* * " It is the misfortune of France that her ' past' cannot be 
loved or respected; her future and her present cannot be wedded 
to it ; yet how can the present yield fruit, or the future have prom- 
ise, except their roots be fixed in the past \ The evil is infinite, 
but the blame rests with tht3se who made the past a dead thing, out 
of which no healthful life could be produced." 

^Life and Correspondence,'' Appendix C, x. 7. 

In his ' Vindication of Niebuhr's History,' Archdeacon Hare 
quotes the following passage from the first edition, with the remark 
that in it " the author seems almost to have snatched a feather out 
of Burke's plumage :" 

" Notwithstanding that they established the festival of the Regi- 
fugium^ and abolished the name of King for ever, the Romans 
were very far from looking back with any ferocity of hatred at the 
times of their monarchal government. The statues of the Kings, 
that of the last Tarquinius himself, it would seem among the rest, 



NOTES TO LECTURE VII 341 

were preserved, and probably even multiplied ; their laws and insti- 
tutions in civil as well as ceremonial matters were maintained in 
full force. The change in the constitution did not at first go beyond 
this single branch ; and never did it enter the heads of the Romans 
to beggar themselves of their rich inheritance of laws and recol- 
lections. It was reserved for our days to see the fruits of thai 
madness, which led our fathers, with an unexampled kind of arro- 
gance, to brand themselves falsely with being a degraded and slav- 
ish race, at the same time that they falsely asserted they were 
called to an unparalleled degree of perfection ; of that madness 
which bragged it would form a new earth by demolishing the old 
one : only once has the world beheld — and we have been the spec- 
tators — universal contempt invoked upon the whole of the past, and 
people proud of the title of slaves broken loose. Something similar, 
indeed, and attended with similar results, had been experienced in 
religious revolutions : the protestant communities have cast away 
the saints and fathers of the church, and they have not done so with 
impunity : it has been the same in the revolutions of science and 
literature. On the other hand, the lessons of all experience teach 
us, that a i .ition cannot possess a nobler treasure than the unbroken 
chain of a long and brilliant history. It is the want of this that 
makes all colonies so sickly. Those of the Greeks indeed seldom 
cut off their recollections altogether from the root of their mother 
city : modern colonies have done so : and this unnatural outrage 
has perhaps operated still more than other circumstances to plunge 
them into a state of incorrigible depravity." 

Note 3.— Page 322. 

This was the feeling when Theramenes separated from the oli- 
garchical party that had set up the government of the ' Four Hun- 
dred,' and just before the counter-revolution which overturned it, 
when Phrynichus was assassinated, in the 92d Olympiad, A. C. 
411. The words of Thucydides referred to are — "tKelvot yap fitD^iara 

(itv l^oi\ovTo 6Xiya^x°^l'-^'^'°'- «f>X^"' '^°-^ '^^^ ^''f/^'^X'^*') ^' ^^ Ms '''oS ts vavi kuI rd 
Teixv '^X^^'''^^ '^^'''o^'^l^^^'^^'*'^! ^^^^97^1^^^°'- ^^ '''*' rovTov [iri oZv vizb rov 6rJixov ye avBis 
yevo^ivov avroX irpb rwv a'AAwv p-oXiara SiacpOaprjvaiy dWa Koi reus TroXf^towj 
iaayay^nevoi avev tcix^v i^cu veS)v ^vn[Srjiai Kat OTraxroCv ra rrji ttoXscoj Exetf kI toZ' 



342 NOTES 

Note 4. — Page 323. 

Speaking of Arthur Young's Travels in Fraiice, Dr. Arnold 

writes : " He shows how deadly was the hatred of the peasantry 

towards the lords, and how in 1789 the chateaux were destroyed 

and the families of the gentry insulted from a common feeling of 

hatred to all who had made themselves and the poor two orders^ 

and who were now to pay the penalty of having put asunder what 

God had joined." 

*Life and Correspondence,^ Letter Dec. 24, 1830. 

Note 5. — Page 325. 

A forcible illustration of the evils of the false ' Conservatism' m- 
volved in the maxim Dr. Arnold is alluding to, is given by a writer 
in a late number of the ^English Review,'' (Dec. 1844.) He speaks 
of "an oracular maxim most usually expressed in the French lan- 
guage, France having been the scene of its most prodigal applica- 
tion. Laissez faire are the words of potency which, from one gen- 
eration to another, have formed the chief trust and confidence of 
rulers, and statesmen, and economists. . . . Still, for the most partj 
revolution is one legitimate result of the long and undisturbed pre- 
dominance of laissez faire. Witness that terrific convulsion, act- 
ually seen, throughout the vi^hole course of itS' development, by 
many men now living, and which made History stand aghast at the 
sore and frightful task M^hich it has laid upon her. For what was 
that explosion but the inevitable issue of a thousand years of sel- 
fish, igrorant, heartless, and we might justly add, godless non-inter- 
ference A considerable portion of the preceding century more 
especially, vras the very riot and revelry of the grand master-prin- 
ciple of ''Let alone.'' Its influence pervaded all ranks of the com- 
munity. Let the philosophers and atheists write and talk as they 
list ; let the wits point slanderous epigrams and licentious vers de 
societe ; let the court dance minuets, give petits soupers ; let the 
King quarrel with his parliaments, and take the occasional diversion 
of a lettre de cachet ; above all, let his majesty provide himself 
\viih that one thing needful, a pare aux cerfs ; and all this Avhile, let 
h people live as ihey please and as they can ! What could be more 



TO LECTURE VII- 343 

captivating tnan the seeming liberality of this very comlortable doe- 
trine 1 And yet, some how or other it proved, after all, to be a 
most destructive imposture. It wsis truly remarked by Charles 
Fox, that the government and aristocracy of France seemed to 
have been long smitten by it, vs^ith a judicial infatuation. They 
had eyes, and would not see ; they had ears, and would not hear. 
They were surrounded with degraded and almost famishing mil- 
lions, but they would behold nothmg but princes and nobles. At 
length the measure of iniquity was complete. The phials of wrath 
were filled to the very brim ; and at the fated moment their fury 
was poured out. The issue is known to all. First, the sans-culot- 
terie, with its September massacres, and its reign of terror ; then 
the conscription, and the empire ; and lastly, all Europe on the 
verge of ruin!" — Yo\. ii. p. 257. 

Note 6. — Page 325. 

* * "Meanwhile the judges naturally adhered to their estab- 
lished doctrine ; and in prosecutions for political libels were very 
little inclined to favour what they deemed the presumption, if not 
the licentiousness of the press. They advanced a little farther 
than their predecessors ; and, contrary to the practice both before 
and after the revolution, laid it down at length as an absolute prin-. 
ciple, that falsehood, though always alleged in the indictment, was 
not essential to the guilt of the libel ; refusing to admit its truth to be 
pleaded, or given in evidence, or even urged by way of mitigation 
of punishment. But as the defendant eould only be convicted bv 
the verdict of a jury, and jurors both partook of the general senti- 
ment in favour of free discussion, and might in certain cases have 
acquired some prepossessions as to the real truth of the supposed 
iibel, which the court's refusal to enter upon it could not remove, 
they were often reluetant to find a verdict of guilty ; and hence 
arose by degrees a sort of contention, which sometimes showed 
ilself upon trials, and divided both the profession of the law and the 
general public. The judges and lawyers for the most part, main- 
tained that the province of the jury was only to determine the fact 
of publication ; and also whether what are called the inuendoes 
were properly filled up, that is, whether the libel meant that which 



844 NOTES 

it was alleged in the indictment to mean, not whether such mean- 
ing were criminal or innocent, a question of law which the court 
were exclusively competent to decide. That the jury might acquit 
at their pleasure was undeniable ; but it was asserted that they 
would do so in violation of their oaths and duty, if they should re- 
ject the opinion of the judge by whom they were to be guided as 
to the general law. Others of great name in our jurisprudence, 
and the majority of the public at large, conceiving that this would 
throw the liberty of the press altogether into the hands of the 
judges, maintained that the jury had a strict right to take the whole 
matter into their consideration, and determine the defendants' crim- 
inality or innocence according to the nature of the circumstances 
of the publication. This controversy, which perhaps hardly arose 
within the period to which the present work relates, was settled by 
Mr. Fox's libel bill in 1792. It declares the right of the jury to 
find a general verdict upon the w^hole matter ; and though, from 
causes easy to explain, it is not drawn in the most intelligible and 
consistent manner, was certainly designed to turn the defendant's 
intention, as it might be laudable or innocent, seditious or malignant, 
into a matter of fact for their inquiry and decision." 

Hat.t.am's Const. Hist. vol. iii. p. 22a 

Note 7. — Page 325. 

" * * In many parts of Europe (and especially in our own coun- 
try) men have been pressing forward lor some time, in a path 
which has betrayed by its fruitfulness ; furnishing them constant 
employment for picking up things about their feet, when thoughts 
were perishing in their minds. While Mechanic Arts, Manufac- 
tures, Agriculture, Commerce, and all those products of knowledge 
which are confined to gross, definite, and tangible objects, have, 
with the aid of Experimental Philosophy, been every day putting 
on more brilliant colours ; the splendour af the Imagination has 
been fading : Sensibility, which was formerly a generous nursling 
of rude Nature, has been chased from its ancient range in the wide 
domain of patriotism and religion, with the weapons of derision, 
by a shadow calling itself Good Sense : calculations of presumptu- 
ous Expediency — groping its way among partial and temporary 



TO LECTURE VII. ^45 

consequences — have beea substituted for the dictates of paramount 
and infallible Conscience, the supreme embracer of consequences : 
.'ifeless and circumspect Decencies have banished the graceful neg- 
ligence and unsu&picious dignity of Virtue." p. 164 of Words- 
worth's Trac*. ' On the Convention of Cintra^ written in 1808-9 — 
which Southey, at the time of the publication, justly said was " ip 
that strain of political morality to which Hutchinson, and Milton 
and Sidney, could have set their hands." Though composed only 
as an occasional pamphlet, it abounds with admirable and abiding 
political wisdom, uttered with fervid eloquence. Never having 
oeen reprinted, it has become very rare. 



Note 8. — Page 326. 

" Such then were the principal foreign transactions of the year 1759 
—the most glorious, probably, that England ever yet had seen. That 
it was the most glorious was apparently proclaimed or acknowledged 
by all parties at the time, nor will History find much to detract 
from that contemporary praise. In Asia, Africcu America, Europe, 
by land and sea, our arms had signally triumpheu. Every ship from 
India 3ame fraught with tidings of continued success to the British 
cause. In January we received the news of the capture of Goree, 
in June, o." the capture of Guadaloupe. In August came the tidings 
of the victory at Minden, in September, of the victory off Lagos, 
in October, of the victory at Quebec, in November, of the victory 
at Quiberon. ' Indeed,' says Horace Walpole, in his lively style, 
' one is forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear 
of missing one!' Another contemporary. Dr. Hay, exclaimed, in 
no liberal spirit of triumph, that it would soon be as shameful to 
beat a Frenchman as to beat a woman ! With better reason we 
might have claimed to ourselves the arrogant boast of the Span- 
iards only one hundred and fifty years before, that there were not 
seas or winds sufficient for their ships. Nor did our trade and 
manufactures languish amidst this blaze of military fame. It ia 
the peculiar honour of Chatham — as may yet be seen inscribed on 
Jie stately monument which the citizens of London have raised 
him in Guildhall — that under his rule they found commerce united 



34(3 NOTES 

WITH AND MADE TO FLOURISH BY WAR. Still less Can It be Said 
that these wonders had grown altogether from harmony and con- 
cord at home. It was the just vaunt of Chatham himself in the 
House of Commons, that success had given us unanimity, not una- 
nimity success. Never yet had tliere been a more rapid transition 
from languor and failure to spirit and conquest. Never yet had the 
merits of a great Minister in producing that transition been more 
fully acknowledged in his lifetime. The two Houses, which re- 
assembled in November, met only to pass Addresses of Congratu- 
lation and Votes of Credit. So far from seeking to excuse or to 
palliate the large supplies which he demanded, Pitt plumed himself 
.upon them ; he was the first to call them enormous, and double any 
years of Queen Anne. ' To push expense,' he said openly upon 
the Army Estimates, ' is the best economy' — a wise doctrine in 
war, which, perhaps, no statesman since his son has had the courage 
to avow." 

Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. iv. p. 277. 

* * " Such then was the close of Pitt's justly renowned admin- 
istration. Even amidst the full blaze of its glory there arose some 
murmurs at its vast expense — the only objection of any weight, I 
think, that has ever been urged against it. Yet, as a shrewd ob 
server writes at the time, ' It has cost us a great deal, it is true, 
but then we have had success and honour for our money. Before 
Mr. Pitt came in, we spent vast sums only to purchase disgrace 
and infamy.' What number, I would ask, of pounds, of shillings, 
or of pence, could fairly represent the value of rousing the national 
spirit, and retrieving the national honour ? Is it gold that can 
measure the interval between the lowest pitch of despondency and 
the pinnacle of triumph — between the England of 1756 and tlie 
England of 176 U 

" Let me add, that in the closing act of this administration — in 
proposing an immediate declaration of war against Spain — Pitt did 
not urge any immature or ill-considered scheme. His prepara- 
tions were already made to strike more than one heavy blow upon 
his enemy — to capture the returning galleons — and to take posses- 
sion of the Isthmus of Panama, thus securing a port in the Pacific, 
and cutting oft' all communication between the Spanish pro\incea 



TO LECTURE VII. 3i7 

8f Mexico and Peru. Nor did his designs end here: these points 
once accomplished — as they might have been with little difficulty — 
he had planned an expedition against the Havana, and a.nother, 
on a smaller scale, against the Philippine islands. In none of these 
places could the means of resistance be compared to those of the 
French in Canada, while the means of aggression from England 
would be the same. Yet a few months, and the most precious 
provinces of Spain in the New World, the brightest gems of her 
colonial empire, might not improbably have decked the British 
Crown ! In reviewing designs so vast, pursued by a spirit so lefty, 
I can only find a parallel from amongst that nation which Pitt 
sought to humble ; I can only point to Cardinal Ximenes. This 
resemblance would be the less surprising, since Pitt, at the outs«t 
of his administration, had once, in conversation with Fox, talked 
much of Ximenes, who, he owned, was his favourite character in 

History." 

Id, chap, xxxvii. ad Jin, 

Note 9.— Page 326. 

John Stuart, Earl of Bute, 'the favourite,' as Horace Walpole 
styles him in his ' Memoirs of the Reign of George IH.,' and ' the 
Scotch favourite^ as the London Mob called him, was sworn into 
the first Privy Council of George HI., and as a member of the 
Cabinet. Early in the next year, 1761, he succeeded the Earl of 
Holderness as one of the Secretaries of State, and when Mr, Pitt 
resigned from the Ministry in October, and was followed by Lord 
Temple, the ascendency of Lord Bute became complete. In 1762, 
on the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, he was declared First 
Lord of the Treasury, 

Note 10. — Page 326. 

Lord Mahon, in the fourth volume of his History, after referring 
lO the contemporary opinion of Lord Granville, who, when the pre- 
liminaries of the Treaty of Paris were submitted to him, gave it 
his approbation, as that " of a dying statesman on the most glorious 
war and the most honourable peace the nation ever saw" — add&j 



348 NOTES 

" The calm reflections of posterity will not, I think, confirm thia 
partial judgment. To them the terms obtained will appear by no 
means fully commensurate to the conquests that we had made, nor 
to the expectations which had been, not unreasonably, raised." At 
the same time he regards it still farther removed from the violent 
reproaches which were cast upon it by party hatred. " The mis- 
representations," he remarks, " against this treaty were undoubtedly 
far greater than even its defects." IV. pp. 408-9, ch.. xxxviii. 
The debate on the Preliminaries was the occasion, it will be re- 
membered, of one of Pitt's remarkable efforts in the House of 
Commons, when his elaborate eloquence was exerted, but without 
effect, against the Treaty. 



Note 11.— Page 329. 

'* The publication of regular newspapers, partly designed for the 
communication of intelligence, partly for the discussion of politica) 
topics, may be referred, upon the whole, to the reign of Anne, when 
they obtained great circulation, and became the accredited organs 
of different factions. The tory ministers, towards the close of that 
reign, were annoyed at the vivacity of the press both in periodical 
and other writings, which led to a stamp duty, intended chiefly to 
diminish their number, and was nearly producing more pernicious 
restrictions, such as renewing the licensing act, or compelling au- 
thors to acknowledge their names.* These however did not take 
place, and the government more honourably coped with their adver- 
saries in the same warfare ; nor with Swift and Bolingbroke on 
their side could they require, except indeed through the badness of 
their cause, any aid from the arm of power. "| 

Hallam's Constit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 396. 



* " A bill was brought in for this purpose ia 1712, which Swift, in his History cf 
the Last Four Years, who never printed any thing with his name, naturally blames 
It miscarried, probably on account of this provision." * * * 

t " Bolingbroke's letter to the Examiner, in 1710, excited so much attention, that 11 
was answered by lord Cowper, then chancellor, in a letter to the Tatler. Somers' 
Tracts, xiii. 75 ; where Sir Walter Scott jxistly observes, that the fact of two such 
statesmen becoming the correspondents of periodical publications, shows the inlliienc*! 
hey must have acquired over the public mind." 



TO LECTURE VII. 349 

" Ce fut le cardinal Mazarin qui s'avisa le premier de faire un in- 
strument politique des feuilles qui, a I'imitation de la gazetta de 
Venise^ se publiaient en Italie. Ce ministre astucieux y faisait in- 
serer des bulletins de la guerre d'Espagne, et des nouvelles poli- 
tiques sur les evenemens interieurs de la France, auxquels il donnait 
la couleur qui convenait a ses vues et favorisait ses intrigues. Get 
exemple ne manqua pas d'imitateurs." 

Dumas : ' Precis des Evenemens Militaires,' tome ix. notes, p. 435. 

Note 12.— Page 332. 

"The censorship was an office so remarkable, that however fa- 
miliar the subject may be to many readers, it is necessary here to 
bestow some notice on it. Its original business was to take a 
register of the citizens and of their property ; but this, which seems 
at first sight to be no more than the drawing up of a mere statistical 
report, became in fact, from the large discretion allowed to every 
Roman officer, a political power of the highest importance. The 
censors made out the returns of the free population ; but they did 
more ; they divided it according to its civil distinctions, and drew 
up a list of the senators, a list of the equites, a list of the members 
of the several tribes, or of those citizens who enjoyed the right of 
voting, and a list of the agrarians, consisting of those freedraen, 
naturalized strangers, and others, who being enrolled in no tribe, 
possessed no vote in the comitia, but still enjoyed all the private 
rights of Roman citizens. Now the lists thus drawn up by the cen- 
sors were regarded as legal evidence of a man's condition : the 
state could refer to no more authentic standard than to the returns 
deliberately made b)' one of its highest magistrates, who was re- 
sponsible to it for their being drawn up properly. He would, in the 
first place, be the sole judge of many questions of fact, such as 
whether a citizen had the qualifications required by law or custom 
for the rank which he claimed, or whether he had ever incurred 
any judicial sentence which rendered him infamous ; but from thence 
the transition was easy, according to Roman notions, to the de- 
<?ioion of questions of right ; such as whether a citizen was really 
worthy of retaining his rank, whether he had not committed some 
act as justly degrading as those which incurred the sentence of the 



350 NOTKy 

law ; and in this manner the censor gave a definite power to public 
opinion, and whatever acts or habits were at variance with the gen- 
eral feeling, he held himself authorized to visit with disgrace or 
disfranchisement. Thus was established a direct check upon many- 
vices or faults which law, in almost all countries, has not venturec' 
to notice. Whatever was contrary to good morals, or to the cus 
toms of their fathers, Roman citizens ought to be ashamed to prac- 
tise : if a man behaved tyrannically to his wife or children, if he 
was guilty of excessive cruelty even to his slaves, if he neglected 
his land, if he indulged in habits of extravagant expense, or followed 
any calling which was regarded as degrading, the offence was justly 
noted by the censors, and the offender was struck off from the list 
of senators, if his rank were so high ; or if he were an ordinary 
citizen, he was expelled from his tribe, and reduced to the class of 
the aerarians. Beyond this the censor had no power of degradation ; 
for the private rights of Roman citizens could not be taken away by 
any magistrate ; the sentence could only affect his honours, or such 
privileges as were strictly political."* 

History of Rome, vol. i. 348, chap. xvii. 

Note 13.— Page 332. 

In May, 1770, the Earl of Chatham brought in a bill, in the House 
of Lords, to reverse the proceedings of the House of Commons on 
the Middlesex election — his intention, as he declared, being to give 
the people a strong and thorough sense of the great violation of th- 
constitution, by t'lose unjust and arbitrary proceedings. It was en 
titled " A Bill for rev3rsing the Adjudications of the House of Com 
mens, whereby John Wilkes, Esq. has been adjudged incapable of 
being elected a member to serve in this Parliament, and the Free- 
holders of the County of Middlesex have been deprived of one of 
their legal representatives." It sets forth the rights of the Com- 
mons to elect their representatives ; and after reciting the several 

* "This was called a 'judicium turpe,' and this was incurred in various actions, 
Afhich are specified by the lawyers ; as, for instance, if a man were cast in an actio 
Hurti, or vi bonorum raptorum, or tutelse, or mandati, or pro socio, etc. See Gai;is, In- 
atitiites, iv. § 182. And the disqualification thus incurred was perpetual, and could 
not be reversed by the censors. See Cicero pro Cluentio, 42 " 



TO LECTURE VII. 35J 

elections of Wilkes, and the action of the House of Commons, de- 
clares their adjudications arbitrary and illegal. Lord Chatham 
spoke on the Bill, which was, however, rejected. 

Wilkes was an instance of a worthless and profligate man be- 
coming, by chance or management, the representative of a popular 
principle, and thus acquiring an importance he was utterly unworthy 
of. He was upheld and caressed, because it was conceived that 
in the measures directed against him the Constitution itself was as- 
sailed ; the consequence of which was that, as Horace Walpole 
said, he w^as elected as often as Marius was chosen consul. He 
escaped too in some measure moral reprobation in the defence 
against political persecution. In after years, when the causes of 
his accidental consequence had passed away, he sank to his real 
level. 

Note 14.— Page 332. 

Wilkes's opponent was Col. Luttrell, and the profligate society 
which Dr. Arnold alludes to, is said to have originated wdth Sir 
Francis Dashwood — the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Bute 
Ministry. Horace Walpole — perhaps sufiicient authority in the 
gossip of history — gives the following account of the society and 
its projector. " Sir Francis Dashwood had long been known by his 
singularities and some humour. In his early youth, accoutred like 
Charles XII., he had travelled to Russia in hopes of captivating the 
Czarina ; but neither the » haracter nor di:ess of Charles were well 
imagined to catch a woman's heart. In Italy, Sir Francis had given 
into the most open profammess ; and at his return, had assembled a 
society of Young Travellers, (they called themselves the Dilettanti,) 
to which a taste for the arts and antiquity, or merely having^ trav- 
elled, were the recommendatory ingredients. Their pictures were 
drawn, ornaniented with symbols and devices; and the founder, in 
the habit of St. Francis, and with a chalice in his hand, was repre- 
sented at his devotions before a statue of the Venus of Medicis, a 
stream of glory beaming on him from behind her lower hand. These 
pictures were long exhibited in their club-room at a tavern in Palace 
yard ; but of later years Saint Francis had instituted a more select 
Drder. He and some chosen friends had hired the ruins of Meden- 



352 - NOTES 

ham Abbey, near Mario w, and refitted it in a convenj^ual style, 
Thither at stated seasons they adjourned ; had each their cell, a 
proper habit, a monastic name, and a refectory in common — ^besides 
a chapel, the decorations of which may well be supposed to have 
contained the quintessence of their mysteries, since it was impene- 
trable to any but the initiated. Whatever their doctrines were, their 
practice was rigorously pagan : Bacchus and Venus were the deities 
to whom they almost publicly sacrificed. Yet their follies would 
have escaped the eye of the public, if Lord Bute from this seminary 
of piety and wisdom had not selected a Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. But politics had no sooner infused themselves amongst 
these rosy anchorites, than dissensions were kindled, and a false 
brother arose, who divulged the arcana and exposed the good Prior, 
in order to ridicule him as Minister of the Finances." 

'Memoirs of ike Reign of George the Third,' chap, xi 

Note 15.— Page 333. 

By way of confirmation of a right judgment upon a writer such 
as Junius, the opinion of Coleridge may aptly be added ; 

* * " The great art of Junius is never to say too much, and to 
avoid with equal anxiety a commonplace manner, and matter that 
is not commonplace. If ever he deviates into any originality of 
thought, he takes care that it shall be such as excites surprise for 

its acuteness rather than admiration for its profundity The 

Letters are plain and sensible whenever the author is in the right, 
and whether right or wrong, always shrewd and epigrammatic, and 
fitted for the coffee-house, the exchange, the lobby of the House of 
Commons, and to be read aloud at a public meeting. When con- 
nected, dropping the forms of connection, desultory without abrupt- 
ness or appearance of disconnection, epigrammatic and antithetical 
to excess, sententious and personal, regardless of right or wrong, 
yet well skilled to act the part of an honest, warm-hearted man, 
and even when he is in the right, saying the truth but never 
proving it, much less attempting to bottom it, — this is the charac«- 
ter of Junius ; — and on this character, and in the mould of these 
writings must every man cast himself, \vho would wish in factious 
limes to be the important and long-remembered agent of a faction.' 

' Literary Remains of S. T. C,' i. 240 



TO LECTURE VII. 353 

Note 16.— Page 334. 

"The most splendid passage in Lord Chatham's public life was 
certainly the closing one : when on the 7th of April, 1778, wasted 
by his dire disease, but impelled by an overruling sense of duty, he 
repaired for the last time to the House of Lords, tottering from 
weakness, and supported on one side by his son-in-law Lord Mahon, 
on the other by his second son William, ere long to become like him- 
self the saviour of his country. Of such a scene even the slightast 
details have interest, and happily they are recorded in the words of 
an eye-witness. Lord Chatham, we are told, was dressed in black 
velvet, but swathed up to the knees in flannel. From within his 
large wig little more was to be seen than his aquiline nose and his 
penetrating eye. He looked, as he was, a dying man ; ' yet never,' 
adds the narrator, ' was seen a figure of more dignity ; he appeared 
like a being of a superior species.' He rose from his seat with 
slowness and difficulty, leaning on his crutches and supported by 
his two relations. He took his hand from his crutch and raised it, 
lifting his eyes towards Heaven, and said, — ' I thank God that I 
have been enabled to come here this day, — to perform my duty, 
and to speak on a subject which has so deeply impressed my mind. 
I am old and infirm — have one foot, more than one foot in the grave. 
I am risen from my bed, to stand up in the cause of my country — 
perhaps never again to speak in this House.' The reverence, the 
attention, the stillness of the House were here most affecting ; had 
any one dropped a handkerchief the noise would have been heard. 
At first he spoke in the low and feeble tone of sickness, but as he 
grew warm, his voice rose in peals as high and harmonious as ever. 
He gave the whole history of the American war, detailing the mea- 
sures to which he had objected, and the evil consequences which he 
had foretold, adding, at the close of each period, ' and so it proved.' 
He then expressed his indignation at the idea, which he heard had 
gone forth, of yielding up the sovereignty of America ; he called 
for vigorous and prompt exertion ; he rejoiced that he was still 
alive, to lift up his voice against the first dismemberment of this 
ancient and most noble monarchy. After him, the Duke of Eich- 
oiond attempted some explanations and defence on the part of tho 
government. Lord Chatham heard him with attention, and when hia 



354 NOTES 

Grace had concluded, eagerly rose to reply. But this last exertiuc 
overcame him, and after repeated attempts to stand firm, he sud- 
denly pressed his hand to his heart, and fell hack in convulsions. 
The Duke of Cumberland, Lord Temple, and other Peers, caught 
him in their arms, and bore him to a neighbouring apartment, while 
the Lords left in the House, immediately adjourned in the utmost 
confusion and concern. He was removed to Hayes, and lingered 
till the 11th of May, when the mighty spirit was finally released 
from its shattered frame. Who that reads of this soul-stirring scene 
< — who that has seen it portrayed by that painter, whose son has 
since raised himself by his genius to be a principal light and orna- 
ment of the same assembly — who does not feel that were the choice 
before him, he would rather live that one triumphant hour of pain 
and suffering, than through the longest career of thriving and suc- 
cessful selfishness 1" 

Lord Mahon's ' Hist, of England^' vol. ill. p. 60. 

This famous scene has suggested a passage in Dr. Arnold's His- 
tory of Rome, which may be quoted here as a specimen not only of 
historic style, but also of the skill with which he frequently renders 
ancient and modern story illustrative of each other : 

Pyrrhus had formed his Italian alliances against Rome — a con- 
sular army had been defeated — Cineas, the favourite minister of the 
King of Epirus, had arrived as ambassador to the City with terms 
of peace, which it was apprehended many of the Senators might be 
awed into favouring : 

" Appius Claudius, the famous censor, the greatest of his coun« 
trymen in the works of peace, and no mean soldier in time of need, 
was now, in the thirtieth year after his censorship, in extreme old 
age, and had been for many years blind. But his active mind tri- 
umphed over age and infirmity; and although he no longer took 
part in public business, yet he was ready in his own house to ^iva 
answers to those who consulted him on points of law, and his name 
was fresh in all men's minds, though his person was not seen in the 
forum. The old man heard that the Senate was listening to the 
proposals of Cineas, and was likely to accept the King's terms of 
peace. He immediately desired to be carried to the Senate-house, 
and was borne in a litter by his slaves through the forum. When 



TO LECTURE VII. 355 

it was known that Appius Claudius was coming, his sons and sons- 
in-law went out to the steps of the Senate-house to receive him, 
and he was by them led into his place. The Vv^hole Senate kept the 
deepest silence as the old man arose to speak. 

" No Englishman can have read thus far without remembering 
the scene, in all points so similar, which took place within our fa- 
thers' memory in our own house of parliament. We recollect how 
the greatest of English statesmen, bowed down by years and infir- 
mity like Appius, but roused like him by the dread of approaching 
dishonour to the English name, was led by his son and son-in-law 
into the House of Lords, and all the peers with one impulse arose to 
receive him. We know the expiring words of that mighty voice, 
when he protested against the dismemberment of this ancient mon- 
archy, and prayed that if England must fall, she might fall with 
honour. The real speech of Lord Chatham against yielding to the 
coalition of France and America, wdll give a far more lively image 
of what was said by the blind Appius in the Roman Senate, than 
any fictitious oration which I could either copy from other writers, 
or endeavour myself to invent ; and those who would wish to know 
how Appius spoke, should read the dying words of the great orator 
of England." — IL ch. xxxvii. p. 496. 

Note 17.— Page 334. 

The adverse fe3ling to the war with France in 1793, and the sub- 
sequent change in the popular mind, are thus spoken of by Words- 
wor'-li, in the Tract ' on the Convention of Cintra :' 

* * " This just and necessary war, as we have been accustomed to 
hear it styled from the beginning of the contest in the year 1793, had, 
some time before the Treaty of Amiens, viz., after the subjugation 
of Switzerland, and not till then, begun to be regarded by the body 
of the people, as indeed both just and necessary ; and this justice 
and necessity were by none more clearly perceived, or more feel- 
inglj' bewailed, than by those who had most eagerly opposed the 
war in its commencement, and who continued most bitterly to regret 
that this nation had ever borne a part in it. Their conduct was 
herein consistent : they proved that they kept their eyes steadily 
fixed upon principles , fpr though there was a siiifting or transfei 



356 NOTES 

of hostility in their minds as far as regarded persons, they only 
combated the same enemy opposed to them under a different shape ; 
and that enemy was the spirit of selfish tyranny and lawless ambi- 
tion. . . . The people now wished for war, as their rulers had done 
before, because open war between nations is a defined and effectual 
partition, and the sword, in the hands of the good and the virtuous, 

is the most intelligible symbol of abhorrence There are 

promptings of wisdom from the penetralia of human nature, which 
a people can hear, though the wisest of their practical Statesmen be 
deaf towards them. This authentic voice the people of England had 
heard and obeyed ; and in opposition to French tyranny, growing 
daily more insatiate and implacable, they ranged themselves zealous- 
ly under their government ; though they neither forgot nor forgave its 
transgressions, in having first involved them in a war with a people 
then struggling for its own liberties under a twofold affliction — con- 
founded by inbred faction, and beleagured by a cruel and imperious 
external foe." — p. 6. 

Note 18.— Page 337. 

The cultivation of historical study is so much regulated by a 
right habit of opinion respecting past ages, especially in their rela- 
tion to the age that is present, that I think it important here to 
illustrate the text by some selections, not only from Dr. Arnold's 
other writings, but from some other thoughtful authors who have 
touched. upon this s'lbject. History loses half its value if it teaches 
only what we are to shun, and nothing to admire and imitate : it 
loses ^11 its value, when an age " refuses to allow its own tempei 
and judgment to be at all controlled by those of antiquity." 

" It is absurd to extol one age at the expense of another, since 
each has its good and its bad. There was greater genius in ancient 
times, but art and science come late. But in one respect it is to hs 
feared we have degenerated — what Tacitus so beautifully expresses, 
after telling a story of a man, who, in the civil war in Vespasian's 
lime, had killed his own brother, and received a reward for it ; 
and then relates that the same thing happened before in the civil 
war of Sylla and Marius, and the man when he found it out kipp*! 



TO LECTURE Vll. 357 

himself from remorse : and then he adds, ' Tanto major apud anti- 
ques ut virtutibus gloria, li^a, Jlagitiis pcenitentia erat.' The deep 
remorse for crime is less in advanced civilization. There is more 
of sympathy with suffering- of all kinds, but less abhorrence of what 
(S admitted to be crime." 

Life and Correspondence : Appendix C, ix. 3 

" There are few stranger and sadder sights" (writes Dr. Arnold; 
in the 'Introduction' to the fourth volume of his Sermons — 1841) 
"than to see men judging of whole periods of the history of mankind 
with the blindness of party spirit, never naming one century with- 
out expressions of contempt or abhorrence, never mentioning another 
but with extravagant and undistinguishing admiration." — p. 8. 

And in the same ' Introduction :' 

* * " In philosophy and general literature, there have been 
sufficient proofs that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred 
years had been swinging one way, was now (' in the last ten years 
of the last century') beginning to swing back again ; and as its last 
oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it may be, that its 
present impqlse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on 
again, in aft^r ages, another corresponding reaction. 

" Now, if it be asked what, set:ing aside the metaphor, are the 
two points between which mankind has been thus moving to and 
fro ; and what are the tendencies in us which, thus alternately pre- 
dominati ig, give so different a character to different periods of the 
human history ; the answer is not easy to be given summarily, for 
the generalization which it requires is almost beyond the compass 
of the human mind. Several phenomena appear in each period, 
and it would be easy to give any one of these as marking its tend- 
ency ; as, for instance, we might describe one period as having a 
tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness : but the true 
answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering that com- 
mon element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in 
philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject matter 
of each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper 
nature is no longer to be recognised. Again, it would be an error 
to suppose that either of the two tendencies which so affect the 
course of human affairs were to be called simply bad or good 



358 NOTES 

Each has its good and evil nicely intermingled ; and taking tlie 
highest good of each, it would he difficult to say which was the 
more excellent ; taking the last corruption of each, we could not 
determine which was the more hateful. For so far as we can 
trace back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern 
mountains, and some from the western, to the highest springs from 
which they rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and 
justice, on the other those of beauty and love — things so exalted, 
and so inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set 
either two above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet 
these most divine things separated from each other, and defiled in 
their passage through this lower world, do each assume a form in 
human nature of very great evil : the exclusive and corrupted love 
of truth and justice becomes in man selfish atheism ; the exclusive 
and corrupted worship of beauty and love becomes in man a bloody 
and lying idolatry. 

" Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in 
which human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting. 
But real history, even the history of all mankind, and much more that 
of any particular age or country, presents a picture far more com- 
plicated. First, as to time : as the vessels in a harbour, and in the 
open sea without it, may be seen swinging with the tide at the 
same moment in opposite directions ; the ebb has begun in the 
roadstead, while it is not yet high water in the harbour ; so one or 
more nations may be in advance of or behind the general tendency of 
their age, and from either cause may be moving in the opposite 
direction. Again, the tendency or movement in itself is liable to 
frequent interruptions, and short counter-movements : even when 
the tide is coming in upon ths shore, every wave retires after its 
advance ; and he who follows incautiously the retreating waters, 
may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for an 
instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child standing by 
the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it seems, 
irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell whether it 
was ebb or flood : and we, standing for a few years on the shore 
of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which 
we witness is according to or against the general tendency of the 
whole period. Farther yet, as these gfreat tendencies are often iu- 



TO LLCTURE VII. 359 

terrupted, so are they continually mixed : that is, not only are theii 
own good and bad elements successively predominant, but they 
never have the world wholly to themselves : the opposite tendency 
exists, in an under-current it may be, and not lightly perceptible ; 
but here and there it struggles to the surface, and mingles its own 
good and evil with the predominant good and evil of its antagonist. 
Wherefore he who would learn wisdom from the complex experi- 
ence of history, must question closely all its phenomena, must notice 
that which is less obvious as well as that which is most palpable, 
must judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves and 
exceptions ; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of truth, but 
thankful, if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only a 
little ; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier for- 
tresses, in which he can establish himself forever." — p. iii. 

" I confess, that if I were called upon to name what spirit of e\il 
predominantly deserved the name of Antichrist, I should name the 
spirit of chivalry — the more detestable for the very guise of the 
' Archangel ruined,' which has made it so seductive to the most 
generous spirits — but to me so hateful, because it is in direct op- 
position to the impartial justice of the Gospel, and its comprehen- 
sive feeling of equal brotherhood, and because it so fostered a sense 
of honour rather than a sense of duty." 

Life and Correspondence— Leiier, March 30, 1829. 

In his letter " on the Discipline of Public Schools," (Quar. Jour- 
nal of Education, vol. ix. p. 281 — 1835,) Dr. Arnold, speaking of 
the opinion that ' corporal punishment is degrading,' remarks : " I 
well know of what feeling this is the expression ; it originates in 
that proud notion of personal independence, which is neither rea- 
sonable nor Christian, but essentially barbarian. It visited Europe 
in former times with all the curses of the age of chivalry, and is 
threatening us now with those of Jacobinism. For so it is, that the 
evils of ultra-aristocracy and ultra-popular principles spring pre- 
cisely from the same source — namely, from selfish pride — from an 
idolatry of personal honour and dignity in the aristocratical form of 
the disease — of personal independence in its modern and popular 
form. It is simply impatience of inferiority and submission — a 
feeling which must be more frequently wrong or right, in propor- 



3G0 NOTES 

tion to the relative situation and worthiness of him who entertains 
it, but which cannot be always or generally right, except in beings 
infinitely more perfect than man. Impatience of inferiority felt by 
a child towards his parents, or by a people towards its instructors, 
is merely wrong, because it is at variance with the truth : there 
exists a real inferiority in the relation, and it is an error, a fault, a 
corruption of nature, not to acknowledge it." 

These are strong expressions of condemnation of that element in 
the middle ages, which Dr. Arnold termed ' chivalry,' or more 
justly, ' feudality.' If it is to be spoken of as ' chivalry,' then, 
unless we mean vainly to entangle our thoughts in a mere verbal 
discussion, it should- be remembered that it had a side of truth as 
well as of error — a bright side as well as a dark one — and this, its 
glory, Arnold himself saw when his spirit was glpwing with the 
fervent admiration which he habitually professed for the hero-saint, 
the Ninth Louis of France. Looking, however, chiefly at the evils 
of the system, and its abuses during a certain period of history, he 
came to look upon chivalry as the lawless, tyrannical selfishness of 
mediaeval feudality, while another author, looking from another 
point of view, contemplates it as a thing, in some form or other, 
coeval with human society, and infinitely ennobled under the influ- 
ence of the Christian religion, and hence a widely different defini- 
tion of the term : " Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit 
or state of mind which disposes men to heroic and generous actions, 
and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in 
the intellectual and moral world." — ' The Broad Stone of Honour^ 
or the True Sense and Practice of Chivalry,'' by Kenelm Henry 
Digby, Esq. In referring to this volume, I feel that this is one of 
the cases — alas ! too many — where we are constrained to seek for 
truth in the study of extremes ; and I am not willing that the ref- 
erence should be made unaccompanied with explanation of the char- 
acter of the book. In the ' Guesses at Truth^ amid more of en- 
thusiastic eulogy, and more, too, of earnest and reluctant censure 
than I have room to quote, ''The Broad Stone of Honour'' is spoken 
of as " a book, fitted, above almost all others, to inspire youthful 
minds with the feelings befitting a Christian gentleman," and as 
" rich in magnanimous and holy thoughts, and in tales of honour 
and of piety. . . , The author identifies himself, as few have ever 



TO LECTURE VII. 361 

done, with the good, and great, and heroic, and holv in forniet 
times, and ever rejoices in parsing out of himself into them : he 
loves to utter his thoughts and feelings in their vi^ords, rather than 
his own : and the saints, and philosophers, and warriors of old join 
in swelling the sacred consort which rises heavenward from his 
pages. Nevertheless, it is not a hook which can be recommended 
without hesitation to the young. The very charm which it is sure 
to exercise over them, hightens one's scruples about doing so. For 
in it the author has come forward as a convert and champion of th*i 
Romish Church, and as the implacable enemy of Protestantism. . . 
He culls the choicest and noblest stories out of fifteen centuries, — 
and not merely out of history, but out of poetry and romance, — and 
the purest and sublimest morsels of the great religious writers be- 
tween the time of the Apostles and the Reformation : and this mag- 
nificent spiritual hierarchy he sets before us as a living and trust- 
worthy picture of what the Ages of Faith, as he terms them, act- 
ually were. On the other hand, shutting his eyes to what is great 
and holy in later times, he picks out divers indications of baseness, 
unbelief, pusillanimity, and worldlymindedness, as portraying what 
Europe has become, owing to the dissolution of the unity of the 
Church."— p. 206. 

* * * " The present time is distinguished beyond any that have 
preceded it, not merely by the neglect, but by the dislike of antiqui- 
ty. All the world appears bent upon ' laying again the foundation' 
of all things. Customary usage, far from being a recommendation, 
is taken as argument either of folly or of fraud. To plead length 
of prescription in favour of an existing practice, or an established 
right, is to confess that no better reason can be urged in its defence. 
A remote origin affords, it is argued, a presumption, not in favour 
of a given institution, but against it ; because length of years are 
likely to have occasioned a change of circumstances, and what may 
have been right and fitting long ago, can hardly fail of being obso- 
lete and unsuitable now. 

" Thus, whatever is ancient is presumed to be antiquated, more 
eepecially in an enlightened age, preceded by centuries of compara- 
tive darkness, when the human mind, freeing itself from the re- 
straints by which it was formerly fettered, has sprung forward with 

•"^ 1 



362 NOTES 

a sudden and unexampled bound. That such has been for sonio 
time the tone of public feeling, is testified, not only in the course 
of political events, or in the conduct of a political party, but in the 
literature, habits, and manners of the people at large. It may be 
regarded as a moving principle in the formation of popular opinion ; 
a principle sometimes nearly dormant, and overborne by a dead 
weight of custom ; sometimes nicely balanced by counter influen- 
ces, and tending to progressive improvement ; sometimes acquiring 
a rapid and uncontrollable development, and menacing total de- 
struction. 

" That this way of thinking, like every other that obtains widely 
and forcibly among mankind, has a side of truth, and when properly 
limited, has been productive of good ; nay, that at certain periods 
it has been usefully called forth into unusual energy in the service 
of religion, need not be denied : but that, as at present exhibited, it 
is mischievous, extravagant, and unreasonable, is felt by alL sober- 
minded persons, and scarcely requires proof. 

" And, first, it greatly overestimates, not merely the superiority 
of the present over past ages, in substantial wisdom, and that 
knowledge, of whatever kind, upon which it is founded, but even 
the difference in kind, existing between our times and those of our 
ancestors. It is not asserted that there has been no advance in use- 
ful knowledge, or that no real variation in the actual state of things 
has taken place, but only that the degree is vastly overrated. 

"In regard to the first, the supposed superiority of the present 
age, the mistake arises in various ways. A part of knowledge, 
perhaps the least important, is put for the whole. No balance is 
struck between what is gained in one department, and what is lost 
in another. The worthiness of the end pursued is not considered 
in determining the value of the means. Thus science, the doctrine 
of means, usurps the place of philosophy, the doctrine of ultimate 
ends. The economy of wealth is taken as the measure of national 
welfare; legislation passes for jurisprudence. So again, the study 
of nature may have flourished, the study of mind may have drooped ; 
the arts of life may have advanced, domestic wisdom may have lost 
ground ; education may have been diffused, scholastic learning may 
have declined. All our gains are counted, but our losses are net 
«et against them. And again, personal comfort, convenience, «i 



TO LECTURE VII. 303 

luxury, mental or bodily, is openly proposed, not only as the best, 
but as the only object of intellectual pursuit ; whereas formerly, the 
search of truth was supposed to bring its own recompense. Thus 
a lower end is substituted for a higher; and by overstating the 
claims of our fellow-creatures, once too much neglected in these 
studies, we forget the more sublime relation between the human 
spirit and the God who gave it. The effect which has resulted to 
ihe religion of the day is very striking, and far from unmixedly 
good. It is the recoil of monastic piety in matters of devotion, as 
of monastic philosophy in the pursuit of intellect." * * * 

" In a word, the contempt of antiquity, so commonly manifested, 
places the age in a false position, more especially in ecclesiastical 
affairs. A single generation is drawn up in array against all that 
have preceded it, and has to make good its pretensions, not only 
with no assistance from the great and good men that ' sleep in the 
Lord,' but against their united forces. Covenant is broken with 
the mighty dead ; and they, whose everliving wisdom, whether it 
speak to us in books, or yet more impressively in the institutions 
which they have contributed to form, to sanction, to improve, are 
set aside to make room for the new, capricious, dogmatical, untried 
authorities of the day ; for partial interests, sectarian prejudice, and 
temporary fashion ; for the despotic sway and idolatrous worship of 
the present ; as if there wjre neither voice nor vision in the oracu 
lar past." 

Derwent Coleridge : ' Scriptural Character of the Churchy p. 80. 

* * " Far from adopting an opinion which was prevalent at least 
till very recently, that the questions which occupied the schools 
were trivial, senseless, and now wholly obsolete, we think it is diffi- 
cult to overrate their intrinsic value, or the influence which they 
are exercising upon ourselves at the present moment. The persons 
who use the words Ontology or Nominalism and Realism with a 
sneer, little know how much those difficulties of which Ontology 
treats are besetting their own path ; with what vehemence the con- 
troversy between Nominalism and Realism is carried on within 
tiieir own minds and in the minds of all about them. We do not 
gain much by speaking contemptuously of our progenitors ; we only 
contrive that we should suffer all the perplexities which they siif- 



364 NOTES 

fered without the tame consciousness of them which they had, and 
without their help in extricating ourselves from them. The mistake 
has been owing, we fancy, in a great measure to a confused appre- 
hension that the schools and the world have in all times, and had at 
this time especially, very little to do with each other. The fashion 
of scorning the active life of the middle ages is passing away ; nay, 
is just at present giving place to a sentimental admiration. Men 
have discovered that something was done in this so-called dark time 
which we in our bright time could not well dispense with. But un- 
less the speculative life of that period, besides obtaining the cour- 
teous treatment which it is likely to meet with under such a re- 
action, be viewed in connection with this practical life and shown 
to be inseparable from it, there is no chance, we think, of either 
being dealt with clearly and justly. A history which should do 
this would far more effectually expose the real evils of the middle 
ages, and show whence those evils flowed, than all vehement party 
declamations against them, which being written without sympathy 
for the right, are very seldom successful in detecting the wrong. " 
* * p. 640. 

* * " Through terrible conflicts, in spite of fearful sins, this age 
(of the schoolmen) had been really effecting its work, and was to 
leave imperishable tokens for the generations to come. The first 
period after Christianity had left the form of a universal polity ; 
had left ordinances, creeds,, ecclesiastical institutions, the witnesses 
of this universal polity, the powers by which it was upheld, and by 
which men were enabled to possess and enjoy its benefits ; it had 
left records of the oppositions through which transcendent and uni- 
versal truths had been maintained and confirmed ; it had left a 
literature connecting itself with the former literature of the world, 
and showing that what therein had been foretold or wished for had 
come to pass. If these deposits remained and remain to this day, 
is it not equally true that those middle ages have left their deposits i 
National societies grown up from infancy to manhood ; the forms 
of law established ; languages created and defined ; new forms in- 
vented in which ihe conceptions of men could clothe themselves — 
forms of architecture, of poetry, and finally of painting ; last, and 
we are bound to say not least, the full power and dimensions of the 
logical faculty in man ascertained by a series of precious experi 



TO LECTURE VII. 365 

rnents determining what it can and what it cannot achieve. For 
let no one say that the scholastic philosophy is obsolete in its effectSj 
because the volumes which contain it are seldom read, and because 
it has been found to have failed in much that it hoped to do. Not 
the feeblest newspaper scribe, who writes praises of the nineteenth 
century, and talks about the discoveries of Bacon, and the vain 
squabbles by which men were distracted till his time, could cast 
even these empty phrases into a coherent and intelligible shape, if 
those schoolmen whom he abuses had not lived. As truly as wc 
owe our laws and ecclesiastical buildings to the middle ages, so 
truly do we owe to them our forms of thought and language. We 
are very unhappy if we have not learnt much since that time, and 
we shall presently have to show in what direction that learning has 
been won. But in fixing the terms and conditions of human thought, 
we are bold to say, that men have only done any thing by going back 
to these schoolmen, and using the fresh light that may have fallen 
upon us to the more effectual consideration of the questions which 
they raised. 

" When one reflects on these facts, men may surely be well con- 
lent that what is called the revival of letters came when it did, and 
not four or five centuries earlier. Most sad would it have been for 
the world, if the western nations, instead of being left to work out 
a cultivation for themselves with only such helps from ancient lore 
as best suited the thoughts which were awakening in them, had 
been overlaid with heaps of books, in which their circumstances 
gave them no interest, which they could not interpret livingly, and 
which would therefore have crushed all sparks of native and origi- 
nal speculation. When that revival did come, the inhabitants of 
western Europe were in some way prepared for it — prepared a1 
least, by their own sense of a national position, to enter into the 
national feelings, and the thoughts and inquiries accompanying them, 
whereof Grecian books are the exposition." * * * p, 64"', 
* EncyclopcBdia Metropolitana,' vol. ii. of 'Pure Sciences:' 'Moral and 
Metaphysical Philosophy,' by the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, 
Professor of English Literature and History, in King's College Lon- 
don. 

'^ * * In dealing with ancient institutions which appear to have 
lost their efficacy, there are two courses. The narrow-minded, the 



366 NOTES TO LECTURE VII. 

men of mere practical understanding, without imagination to call up 
those manifold relations which lie beyond the span of the under- 
standing, — they who see one thing clearly and distinctly, and who 
straightway conclude that it is the only thing to be seen, who walk 
between two high walls, and suppose that the whole world is in- 
cluded between them, — they who have no reverence for antiquity, 
no faith in a higher spirit guiding and shaping the actions of men, 
and pervading their institutions, — they who trust in their own wis- 
;lom and in their own will, and who desire to see that wisdom and 
that will reflected in every thing around them, — will destroy the 
decayed institution as worthless to set up some creation of their 
own in its stead. They on the other hand who have learnt to dis- 
trust their own wisdom, and to suspect their will, — who have dis- 
covered the limits of their faculties, and how narrow they are, — 
who have perceived how far the largest part of what is valuable 
in their minds is owing to the unnoticed influences of the thoughts 
and principles and institutions amid which they have grown up, — 
they who have discerned that in nations also, and in other bodies 
corporate, there is a kind of instinct, whereby they seek and assimi- 
late what is suitable and healthful, rejecting what is noxious, — who 
have discerned that in nations also ' the child is father of the m-an,' 
and that the only sure progress of national life lies in expansion and 
transfiguration, not in transmigration, — ^will always be anxious to 
preserve the institutions which their fathers have left them, not 
however in their worn-out, dilapidated state, but restored to com- 
pleteness and vigour, with a new spirit of life kindled in them." 
Arc\deacon Julius Charles Hare's ' Charge.^ 1840. 



LECTURE VIIL 



We have now for some time been engaged in analyzing 
CxQ statements of history, in order .o the more clear under- 
standing of them ; and particularly we have been consider- 
ing the forms of political party in our own country, with a 
view to discover what in them has been accidental and what 
essential. I have assumed certain facts as unquestionably 
true, and have made them the groundwork of what I have 
said, either to account for them, or to point out their conse- 
quences. But what are we to say, if these facts themselves 
are disputed ; if we are taunted with the known exaggera- 
tions and falsehoods of human testimony ; with the difficul- 
ties surrounding all investigation of human actions, even if 
most ably and fairly conducted ; and with the many defects 
of individual writers, which have made them, as investiga- 
tors, neither able nor fair ? Or are these objections to be 
met by saying, that although the truth relating to past ages 
be difficult to discover, yet that contemporary history is at 
any rate entitled t^^ confidence ; that men cannot misrepresent 
in the face of detection ; that in this case truth may be dis- 
covered, and cannot but be declared ? Or is any other an- 
swer to be given, maintaining any other criterion ; or shall 
we be obliged to confess the unsoundness of all our goodly 
fabric ; and to compare historical deductions, however logi- 
cal, to the elephant in the well-known apologue, which rested 
upon a tortoise, and the tortoise rested upon a stone, and the 
stone rested upon nothing ? 

The question now befo''e us is clearly of considerable im- 



368 LECTURE VIII. 

portance. If historical testimony be really worth nothing, 
it touches us in one of the very divinest parts of our nature, 
Ihe power of connecting ourselves with the past. For this 
we do and can do only through knowledge which we must 
call historical. Without such knowledge, what would the 
ancient buildings of this place be but monuments more un- 
meaning than the Pictish towers of Scotland and Ireland ? 
They would not tell their own story alone ; they would onl^ 
show that they were not new, anji by examining their stones 
we might tell out of what quarries it bad been hewn : but as 
to all that constitutes their real charm, as representing to us 
first the times of their founders, and then with wonderful 
rapidity the successive ages which have since passed, amidst 
how different a world their inmates have, generation after 
generation, trod their courts, and studied in their chambers, 
and worshipped in their chapels, — all this would be utterly 
lost to us. Our life would be at once restricted to the span 
of our own memory ; nay, I might almost say, to the span of 
our own actual consciousness. For if no other man's report 
of the past is to be credited, I know not how we can defend 
the very reports of our own memories. They, too, unques- 
tionably are fallible ; they, too, very often are perplexed by 
vague or conflicting recollections ; we cannot tell whether we 
remember or no ; nor whether we remember correctly. Ar^d 
if this extreme scepticism be, as it clearly is, absurd even to 
insanity, yet we want to know what abatements are to be 
made from it ; where it not only ceases to be insane, but be- 
comes reasonable and true ; there being no question at all 
that we have been often deceived with false accounts of the 
past ; that human testimony is the .estimony of those wlic 
are often deceived, who often endeavour to deceive, and who 
perhaps more often still are both in the one predicament and 
the other ; not loving truth sincerely, and at the same limf 
"eally unable to discern it. 



LECTURE VIII. 369 

Now, in an inquiry into the credibility of history in the 
largest sense of the word, the first question which we will 
consider is, whether any composition bearing more or less of 
an historical form, be really historical or no, in the intention 
of its author. For if it be not, then if we accept it igno- 
rantly as such, we are in the condition of those persons on 
whom a trick has been played ; our belief has in it some- 
thing ludicrous, like theirs who innocently fall into a mis- 
chievous boy's snare on the first of April ; and although in 
this case there was probably no mischief intended, yet that 
makes our mistake only the more ridiculous, if we went 
wrong when no one endeavoured to mislead us. Conceive 
Dne of the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott surviving: 
alone amongst its companions to some very remote age, when 
the greatest part of our literature should have perished, and 
all knowledge of Scott as a novelist should be utterly lost. 
Suppose that of all his numerous works there should exist 
• only his Life of Napoleon, Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, and 
his novel of Woodstock. Conceive posterity taking all the 
three works as equally historical ; in the one, it might be 
said we have an elaborate narrative, in a regular historical 
form, of the life of the Emperor Napoleon ; in the second we 
have a most lively account of the principal events of his sec- 
ond reign, given in letters written at the time and from the 
very scene of action ; while in the third we have a narra- 
tive, taken probably from some ancient chronicle, and there- 
fore much more dramatic and more full of minute details, of 
some passages in the life of Charles the Second, including 
the story of his wonderful concealment and escape after the 
battle of Worcester. It would then be received as fact, that 
Charles, after his escape from the battle, was sheltered and 
concealed at Woodstock, and that Cromwell himself came 
down to Woodstock, and, guided by the information of a pre. 
tended royalist, had nearly succeeded in surprising him. 



370 lECTURE VIII. 

There is nothing in the book, it would be urged, that declares 
it to be a fiction ; it is a narrative about real historical per- 
sons ; why should we doubt its accuracy ? So men might 
argue, and might be led into a mistake which to us appears 
altogether ridiculous, because we know that Woodstock is a 
novel ; but which is not at all inconceivable in those who 
centuries afterwards should find it in company with other 
works of the same author, which they supposed equally to be 
historical, and one of which in fact is so. Now there are 
times and writings in which all narrative bears more or less 
the character of an historical novel ; it may contain truth, 
and often does so : but this is merely accidental ; the writer's 
object is merely to amuse, and whether his story happens to 
be authentic or not gives him no sort of concern. Sometimes 
there seems to be absolutely an intention to mislead the sim- 
ple reader ; not a malicious or fraudulent intention, for any 
grave ends of falsehood, but, as appears, only for the mere 
joke's sake ; for the pleasure of imposing on the unsuspi- 
cious. Now, wherever this spirit may at all be supposed to 
exist, we are completely falling into the writer's trap if we 
really take him at his word, as if he were in earnest ; and 
our error is not less, if, not understanding the character of 
narration, whether in verse or prose, at the particular period, 
or in writers of a certain sort, we conceive exactness of fact 
to be its object, instead of amusement, or possibly some 
moral or religious lesson which the story was framed to 
inculcate. And therefore our first question with respect 
to a story or narrative should be, was the writer in earnest 
or in jest ? and if in earnest, was he in earnest as to the 
facts or as to the moral conveyed by the facts ? For he 
may have been very earnest indeed as a poet, or as a 
moral teacher, or as inculcating some deep religious truth 
under a symbolical veil, and yet not at all in earnest as a 
fnatter-of-fact historian. This question is one of great im 



LECTURE VIII. 37 i 

portance to put, and unhappily it is not always easy to fiud 
the answer to it. 

You will see where the difficulty lies, if you consider the 
case which I supposed, of some future age mistaking Wood- 
stock for an authentic history. We do not mistake it, chiefly 
I think for certain external reasons ; that it is published as a 
novel, and has always been received as such ; and farther, 
because we are familiar with many other works of the same 
sort, so that the notion of an historical novel is one which 
readily occurs to us. But ancient books do not tell us the 
story of their publication ; we do not know how they were 
received by their original readers, nor are specimens of the 
literature of the time sufficiently numerous to enable us to 
conceive readily what form they would be likely to assume. 
It does not seem possible, therefore, always to have a sure 
criterion whether a given narrative be historical or no ; or 
at any rate, to have such a criterion as may be applied by 
ordinary readers ; such as is palpable and tangible, or to use 
the German expression, handgreiflich. A criterion there is 
indeed, not of course unerring, yet generally to be relied 
upon, in the instinctive tact of those who are much conver- 
sant with the narratives of early times, and with the charac- 
ter of undoubted history, and who feel at once where they 
have history, and where they have poetry, or apologue, or 
allegory, or a story careless of fact and aiming only at truth, 
or it may be, seeking neither fact noi truth, but simply to 
amuse and astonish its readers. This feeling in a sensible 
man is, I believe, very much to be relied upon ; but you can- 
not justify it to those who dispute it; you cannot establish it 
upon tangible evidence, appreciable by the ignorant no less 
than by the wise. 

For the greater part of modern history, however, the ques- 
tion which we have now been considering will not give ua 
any trouble. Yet it presents itself, I think, in some of the 



g72 LECTURE VIII. 

ecclesiastical biographies, where we find not unfrequently 
grotesque touches^ to say nothing of other matters, such a^ 
leave great room for doubting whether their authors evei 
meant them to be taken as simple matter-of-fact narratives. 
The human mind so shrinks from undisguised and unpallia- 
ted falsehood, that it is generally safer as well as more char- 
itable, when we are reading a narrative which it is impossible 
to believe, to suppose that the writer himself did not mean it 
to be taken seriously ; regarding the facts at best as the or- 
nament, or, if you will, as a sort of conventional expression 
of what he did believe to be a truth, namely, the sanctity of 
the subject of his biography. We may call this, if we will, 
a species of pious fraud ; but at any rate, its guilt is much 
less than it would be now, inasmuch as it would not be equal- 
ly regarded as a bringing forward false evidence to establish 
a conclusion. The moment that facts come to be regarded 
in the light of essential evidence, without whicli our conclu- 
sion falls, then all tampering with or exaggerating them is a 
gross fraud, to be condemned with no qualification what- 
ever. (1) But I should doubt whether the spirit of the well- 
known story of the man who, when told that the facts were 
wholly at variance with his theory, replied, Tant pis pour les 
fails, was not very generally prevalent before the time of 
Bacon, in more matters than in natural philosophy. (2) 
Principles of science were assumed on a priori reasoning ; 
and opinions in theology were he d in the same manner, not 
indeed upon reasoning of any kind so much as upon author- 
ity, but yet independently of any supposed proof to be lookeo 
for from particular miracles. This consideration is perhaps 
worth attending to, as it may in some measure account for a 
carelessness as to the truth of facts which otherwise would 
be merely scandalous ; and allows us to qualify as fictions 
what we otherwise should be obliged to call falsehoods. 
Passing on, then, to narratives which propose to be histori 



LECTURE VIII. 373 

cal, that is, where stress is understood to be laid upon the 
facts, and it is the writer's avowed object to represent these 
faithfully, and we ask under what circumstances and to what 
degree can we maintain their credibility. And first, let us 
consider what are the claims of a writer upon our belief, 
merely on the strength of his being contemporary with the 
events which he relates. 

That a contemporary writer cannot avoid giving us some 
correct and valuable impressions of his times, is evident. 
For such points of detail as an antiquarian delights in, he 
may be fully relied upon ; and he himself is at any rate an 
authentic portrait ; his own mind, with its peculiar leanings^ 
his own language, with its peculiar style and forms of words, 
these must certainly be drawn faithfully, because drawn un- 
consciously ; and we cannot doubt their witness. But be- 
yond this, and for historical facts properly so called, the 
value of a contemporary historian is often greatly overrated. 
No man sees the whole of his own times, any more than an 
officer in action sees the whole of the battle. Some are too 
busy to contemplate society in all its relations ; others are 
too abstracted from it altogether. With regard to public 
events, ordinary men are but in a very slight degree wit- 
nesses of them : the councils of governments, the secret 
springs of parties, are known only to a few ; military and 
naval events take place publicly indeed, but often at a great 
distance, and though they may happen in our time, yet our 
knowledge of them only comes from the reports of others. 
Again, it should be remembered, that many things which 
we have seen and heard we forget afterwards : that although 
we were contemporary with the events which took place ten 
years ago, yet that we are not perhaps contemporary with 
ther.i when we relate them; even what we ourselves said 
and did is no longer present to us ; our witness is that of one 
living after the event. (3) To this must be added disadvan- 



374 LECTURE VIII. 

cages which are generally recognised ; the livelier state of 
passion to which a contemporary is liable, the veil hanging 
over many characters and over the causes of many actions 
which only after-ages will see removed. So that on the 
whole, it is by no means sufficient to known that a history 
was written by a contemporary : it may have been so, and 
yet may be of very little value ; full of idle reports and un- 
examined stories, giving the first obvious view of things, 
which a little more observation would have shown to be far 
from the true one. 

Ascending a step higher, and supposing an historian to be 
not merely contemporary with the events which he relates, 
but an actual witness of them, his credibility no doubt be- 
comes much greater. We must distinguish, however, be- 
tween what I may call an active and a passive witness. I 
call a passive witness one who was present, but took no part 
in the actions described ; as for instance, Edward the Fourth's 
chaplain, who has left us an account of King Edward's 
landing in England after Warwick had obliged him to fly, 
of his march towards London, and of the decisive battle of 
Barnet. This is a witness in the lowest degree, from which 
we ascend, according as the direct interest and share in the 
transactions related is greater, up to the highest sort of wit- 
ness ; namely, the main agent and director of the actions. 
Here we have knowledge as nearly perfect as possible ; a 
full understanding of the action in all its bearings, a view of 
its different parts in connection with each other ; and a clear 
perception and recollection of each, because our knowledge 
of one helps us to remember another, and because we our- 
selves directed them. And thus in the case of Csesar and 
the Emperor Napoleon we have witnesses, to whose know- 
ledge of the actions which they relate, nothing, as it seems, 
could be added. Yet we should not be justified in viewing 
the Commentaries of the one or the Memoirs of the other as 



LECTURE VIII. 375 

perfectly trustworthy histories ; on the contrary, few narra- 
tives require to be read with more constant and vigilant sus- 
picion. For unhappily a knowledge of the truth does not 
imply an intention of uttering it; it may be, on the contrary, 
that he w ho knows perfectly the real state of the case should 
find it to his interest to represent it altogether differently, and 
his knowledge then does but enable him to misrepresent 
more artfully. And as in the infirmity of human nature no 
man's actions are always what he likes to look back upon, 
as there are points in which he would wish that he had acted 
otherwise ; so every man who tells his own story is under a 
temptation more or less to disguise the truth : and the more, 
in proportion as his actions have been upon a larger scale, 
and his faults or mistakes therefore have been more flagrant. 
Yet do we not lose entirely the benefit of a writer's know- 
ledge, even when his honesty is most questionable. He w^ho 
always can tell the truth when he has a mind to do so, will 
tell it very often, because in a great many instances he has 
no conceivable interest in departing from it. Thus Caesar's 
descriptions of countries "have always been held to be of high 
value ; for in them we have all the benefit of his intelligence, 
with nothing to be deducted on account of his want of prin- 
ciple. And so again in relating his own military conduct, 
as it was mostly so admirable that to relate it most truly was 
to praise it most eloquently, his knowledge gives us every 
tiling that we can desire. The same may be said of Napo- 
leon : his sketch of the geography of Syria, and of that of 
Italy, his account of Egypt, and his detail of his proceedings 
at the siege of Toulon, are all most excellent. The latter in 
particular, his account of the siege of Toulon, is a complete 
specimen of what is valuable and what is suspicious in his 
narratives. His description of the topography of Toulon, 
and of his o'vn views in recommending the attack on Fort 
IVIalbosquet, as the point where the enemy's operations migh1 



376 LECTURE VIII. 

be impeded most effectually, is all clear and admirable ; b>il 
his statement of the enemy's force in Fort Malbosquet, and 
of the assault itself, is to be regarded with suspicion ; be- 
cause his object not being truth, but his own glory, he never 
puts himself for an instant in the place of an impartial spec- 
tator, to consider what were the disadvantages of his enemy, 
but rather is inclined to exaggerate and multiply all his ad- 
vantages, in order to represent the victory over him as more 
honourable. (4) 

Thus neither is perfect knowledge a guarantee for entire 
trustworthiness. Still let us consider for how much it is a 
guarantee, namely, for truth in all indifferent matters, indif- 
ferent I mean to the writer or to his party ; and for much 
truth easily to be discerned from its colourings, in matters 
that concern him nearly. And so again, a writer's nearness 
to the times of which he treats is a warrant, not for his com- 
plete trustworthiness, but yet for accurate painting of the 
outsides of things, at any rate ; he cannot help telling us 
much that we can depend on, whatever be his own personal 
qualifications. So in all historians, the mere outline of events 
is generally credible, and speaking of modern history, we 
can always also, or almost always, trust to the dates. We 
get everywhere therefore a certain portion of truth, only 
more or less corrupted; but what we want to know is, 
whether there be any qualification in an historian which 
will give us more than this ; which will enable us to trust to 
him all but implicitly ; without any one positive deduction 
from his credibility, but merely with an acknowledgment 
that beins: human he is therefore fallible, and that if sufficient 
reasons exist for doubting his authority in any one point, we 
should not insist at all hazards on maintaining it. 

Now this one great qualification in an historian is an 
earnest craving after truth, and utter impatience not of false- 
hood merely but of error. This is a very different thing, be 



LECTURE VIII. 377 

it observed, from a mere absence of dishonesty or partiality. 
Many minds like the truth a great deal better than falsehood 
when the two are set before them ; they will tell a story 
fairly with great pleasure, if it be told fairly to them. But 
not being impatient and intolerant of error, they suffer it to 
exist undiscovered when no one points it out to them : not 
having a deep craving after truth they rest easily satisfied 
with truth's counterfeit. This is the draXajTrw^ia it fog rrjv 
^7jTYi(fiv TTis dX'n&slag of which Thucydides complains so truly, 
and which, far more than active dishonesty, is the source of 
most of the error that prevails in the world. (5) And this 
fault in some degree is apt to beset us all ; for it is with truth 
as with goodness, none of us love it so heartily as to be at all 
times ready to take any pains to arrive at it, as to question 
its counterfeit when it wears an aspect of plausibility. For 
example, there is a story which has become famous all over 
Europe, repeated from one historian to another, and from one 
country to another, which is yet totally untrue. I mean the 
famous story of the crew of the French ship Le Vengeur in 
the action of the first of June, 1794, refusing to strike their 
colours, and fighting their ship till she went down, and at the 
very moment that she was sinking shouting with one voice, 
Vive la R^puMque ! Even Mr. Carlyle repeated this story 
in his history of the French Revolution, and I have seen it 
within the last month in a very able German* work published 
only last year, given as a remarkable instance of the heroism 
of the French sailors no less than of their soldiers during the 
war of the Revolution. Not for one moment would I deny 
the conclusion ; the heroic defence of the Guillaume Tel] 
against a British squadron off Malta in 1800, and of tho 
Redoutable in the battle of Trafalgar, throw a glory on the 
courage of French seamen, which needs not to be heightened 

* Der zweite Punische Krieg und dpr Kriegsplan der Carthager. VcMi 
Ludwig, Freilierrn von Vincke. Berlin, 1841. 



H78 LECTURE VIII. 

by apocryphal instances of their self-devotion. But when 
Mr. Carlyle's book appeared, one of the surviving British, 
officers who were in the action of the first of June wrote to him 
to assure him that the story was wholly without foundation. 
Upon this Mr. Carlyle commenced a careful inquiry into it, 
and the point which is encouraging is this, that although the 
story related to an event nearly fifty years old, still the means 
were found, when sought, of effectually disproving it ; for 
the official letter of the French captain of Le Vengeur to the 
Committee of Public Safety still exists, and on reference to 
it, it appeared that it was written on board of a British ship ; 
that the Vengeur had struck,* and that her captain and some 
of her men had been removed out of her, and some British 
seamen sent on board to take possession. She sank, it is 
true, and many of her crew were lost in her ; but she sank 
as a British prize, and the British party who had taken pos- 
session of her were unhappily lost in her also. The fictitious 
statement was merely one of Barrere's accustomed flourishes, 
inserted by him in his report of the action, and from thence 
copied by French writers first, and afterwards by foreigners. 
Now here was a case where the truth was found with perfect 
ease as soon as it was sought after ; and the story might 
have been suspected from the quarter in which it originally 
appeared, as also from its internal character ; for although 
cases of the most heroic self-devotion m war are nothins: 
strange or suspicious, yet there was a theatrical display about 

* It so happened that I had been myself aware of the falsehood of the com- 
mon story for many years, and was sorry to see it repeated by Mr. Carlyle in 
his History of the French Revolution. It is more than thirty years since I 
read a MS. account of the part taken by H. M. S. Brunswick, Captain John 
Harvey, in the action of the first of June. The account was drawn up by one 
of the surviving officers of the Brunswick, Captain Harvey having been mor- 
tally wounded in the action, and was in the possession of Captain Harvey's 
family. It was very circumstantial, and as the Yengeur was particularly 
engaged with the Brunswick, it necessarily described her fate, and effectually 
contradicted the story invented by Barrere. 



LECTURE VIII. 379 

this story which did call for examination. And as in this 
instance,* so it is I think generally : that where there is not 
merely a willingness to receive the truth, but a real earnest 
desire to discover it, the truth may almost surely be found. 

I suppose then that what is wanted to constitute a trust- 
worthy historian, is such an active impatience of error and 
desire of truth. And it will be seen at once that these quali- 
ties are intellectual as well as moral, and are as incompatible 
with great feebleness of mind as they are with dishonesty. 
For a feeble mind, and the same holds good also of an igno- 
rant mind, is by no means impatient of error, because it does 
not readily suspect it ; it may reject it when it is made to 
notice it, but otherwise it suffers it patiently and confounds it 
with truth. Now if this love of truth will make a trust- 
worthy historian, so it will enable us no less to judge of what 
is trustworthy history ; and to suspect error on the one hand, 
and to appreciate truth on the other ; and if it will not enable 
us to discover what the truth is, supposing that it has nowhere 
been given, for then it can only be discovered by direct his- 
torical researches of our own, yet to miss the truth where it 
really is not, is in itself no mean knowledge, and the same 

* The interest which we all feel in every thing relating to Nelson will be a 
Bufficient excuse for my inserting in this place a correction of a statement in 
Southey's Life of him, which, as there given, imputes a very miworthy and 
childiah vanity to him, of which on that particular occasion he was whoUy 
iimocent. It is said that Nelson wore on the day of the action of Trafalgar, 
"his admiral's frock coat, bearing on the left breast four stars," that his offi- 
cers wished to speak to him on tlie subject, but were afraid to do so, knowing 
that it was useless ; he having said on a former occasion, when requested to 
change his dress or to cover his stars, " In honour I gained them, and in hon- 
our I will die with them." The truth is, that Nelson wore on the day of 
Trafalgar the same coat which he had commonly worn for weeks, on which 
the order of the Bath was embroidered, as was then usual. Sir Thomas Hardy 
did notice it to him, observing that he was afraid the badge might be marked 
by the enemy ; to which Nelson replied, " that he was aware of that, but that 
it was too late then to shift a coat." This account rests on the authority of 
Sir Thomas Hardy, from whom it was heard by Captain Smyth, and by lum 
coramuiiicated to me. 



380 LECTURE VIII. 

power whicK enables us to do this will enable us also, to a 
considerable degree, to discern where the truth lies hid, if 
we have not ourselves the time or the opportunity to bring it 
to light. 

First of all then, in estimating whether any history is 
trustworthy or no, I should not ask whether it was written by 
a contemporary, or by one engaged in the transactions which 
it describes, but whether it was written by one who loves the 
truth with all his heart, and cannot endure error. For such 
a one, we may be sure, would never attempt to write a his- 
tory if he had no means of writing it truly ; and therefore 
although distant in time or place, or both, from the events 
which he describes, yet we may be satisfied that he had 
sources of good information at his command, or else that he- 
would never have written at all. 

Such an historian is not indeed infallible, or exempt from 
actual error, but yet he is deserving of the fullest confidence 
in his general narrative ; to be believed safely, unles":! we 
happen to have very strong reasons for doubting him in any 
one particular point. But such historians are in the highest 
degree rare ; and the question practically is, how can we 
supply their want, and by the same qualities of mind in our- 
selves, can extract a trustworthy history from that which in 
itself is not completely trustworthy ; setting aside the rub- 
bish and fastening upon the fragments of precious stone which 
may be mixed up with it. Let the historian be whoever he 
may, and if he does not appear to belong to the class of those 
who are essentially trustworthy, let us subject him to some 
such examination as the following. 

His date, his country, and the circumstances of his life, 
may be easily learned from a common biographical dic- 
tionary ; and though these points are not of the greatest 
importance of all, yet they are useful as intimating what 
particular influences we may suspect to have been at work 



LECTURE VIII. 381 

apon his mind, and where therefore we should be particu- 
larly upon our guard. But the main thing to look to is of 
course his work itself. Here the very style gives us an im- 
pression by no means to be despised. If it is very heavy 
and cumbrous, it indicates either a dull man, or a pompous 
man, or at least a slow and awkward man ; if it be tawdry 
and lull of commonplaces enunciated with great solemnity, 
the writer is most likely a silly man ; if it be highly anti- 
thetical, and full of unusual expressions, or artificial ways 
of stating a plain thing, the writer is clearly an affected 
man. If it be plain and simple, always clear, but never 
eloquent, the writer may be a very sensible man, but is too 
hard and dry to be a very great man. If, on the other hand, 
it is always eloquent, rich in illustrations, full of animation, 
but too uniformly so, and without the relief of simple and 
quiet passages, we must admire the writer's genius in a very 
high degree, but we may fear that he is too continually ex- 
cited to have attained to the highest wisdom ; for that is 
necessarily calm. (6) In this manner the mere language 
of an historian will furnish us with something of a key to 
his mind, and will tell us, or at least give us cause to pre- 
sume, in what his main strength lies, and in what he is de- 
ficient. (7) 

The style of a book impresses us immediately ; but pro- 
ceeding to the matter, it is of importance to observe from 
what sources the historian has derived his information. This 
we ought always to be able to discover, by looking at the 
authorities referred to in the margin or at the bottom of the 
page; it is a most unpardonable fault if these are omitted. 
We should consider these authorities as to quantity and quali- 
ty ; as to quantity, for if they are but few, we may feel sure 
that the historian's l^nowledge is meagre : the materials for 
modern history are ample, and if only a few out of so many 
have been consulted, the historian is not equal to his task, 



382 LECTURE VII . 

Consider the richness and variety of Gibbon's references, and 
of Niebuhr's even more, when we know how few the obvious 
sources were for the period with which he was engaged. (8) 
Then as to quality, we should observe, first, whether they 
consist of writers of one country or of several, of all the 
countries, that is, to which the history directly relates ; sec- 
ondly, whether they consist of historians only, or whether 
more miscellaneous sources of information have been referred 
to ; thirdly, what is the character of the authorities most re- 
lied on. Are they really the best that could have been 
found or no ? and if they are, then what are their particular 
qualities and tendencies ? was the historian aware of these, 
and on his guard against them, or no ? By this process we 
shall be enabled to estimate the depth and richness of our 
historian's knowledge, and also in some measure his judg- 
ment as shown in the choice of his authorities, and in his 
appreciation of their just value, knowing where they might 
be trusted implicitly and where suspected. 

We may now carry our judgment a little farther, by ex- 
amining an historian in greater detail ; by observing him as 
a military historian, we will say, as an historian of political 
contests, as an historian of church matters, and so on. In 
military history, for instance, there is first the question, Is he 
a good geographer ? for if not, he cannot be a good military 
historian. (9) Next let us observe his temper ; Does he 
love exaggerations, does he give us accounts of a handful of 
men defeating a multitude ; is one side always victorious and 
always heroic, is the other always defeated, always cruel, 
or blundering, or cowardly ? (10) Or is he an unbeliever in 
all heroism, a man who brings every thing down to the level 
of a common mediocrity ; to whose notions, soldiers care for 
nothing but pay or plunder, and war fs an expensive folly, 
with no fruit but an empty glory ? (11) Depend upon it that 
he truth has not been found by writers of either of these two 



LECTURE \III. 383 

classes. And so in political history. Is the historian a 
master of his science, can he separate the perpetual from the 
temporary, the essential from the accidental ; in the strife of 
parties, does he understand the game or describe the moves 
at random ? Party partialities, if they do not agree with our 
own, we are apt enough to suspect, and even to exaggerate ; 
but do we rightly know what partiality is ? Do we confound 
a decided preference for one cause above another, with a 
misrepresentation of the acts and characters of the men en- 
gaged ; and think that a writer cannot be impartial unless 
he is really ignorant or indifferent ? It is partiality if our 
love of the cause blind us to the faults of its supporters, or 
our hatred of the cause make us unjust to the virtues of its 
advocates. But it is not partiality to say that the support of 
a bad cause is itself evil, the support of a good cause is itself 
good. It is not partiality to say, that the self-same political 
acts, as for example acts of sovereign power exercised be- 
yond the ordinary law, are, according to the cause for which 
they are done, either to be justified or condemned ; and the 
actor IS to be justified or condemned personally, according to 
the cause for which he acted, and the purity of his own mo- 
tives in acting, as shown by his subsequent conduct. Of 
course this does not in the least degree apply to actions 
morally wrong, such as falsehood, or individual injustice, or 
cruelty; for to make the end justify such, were to hold that 
evil may be done that good may come. But in political 
actions the moral character of the act depends mainly on the 
object and motive of it ; the v/ritten law may yield to the 
liigher unwritten law, but not to selfish tyranny or injustice. 
Undoubtedly in such cases the temptations to the actor and 
to the historian are obvious; injustice in deed and in judg- 
ment lie with both close at the door. Nevertheless if there 
be such a thing as political truth, a good and an evil in the 
internal contests of parties, it seems certain that what would 



384 LECTURE VIll. 

pretend to be impartiality is very often ignorance or indif- 
ferentism. and that an historian may be called partial by the 
vulgar, vi^hen he is in fact only seeing more clearly and 
weighing more evenly the respective claims of truth and 
falsehood, good and evil. (12) 

Such an examination will enable us, I think, sometimes to 
discover with certainty, and always to suspect with proba- 
bility, where an historian's narrative is untrustworthy. And 
where it seems to be so, there we should compare it with 
some other narrative, written, if it may be, by an author of 
opinions very unlike those of our first historian. If the sus- 
pected defect relate to some particular matter of fact, then 
to check it is of course easy ; if it consist in general mea- 
gerness or poverty of information, another history by a 
different writer will most probably make up its deficiencies ; 
if it consist in a wrong and narrow judgment of the whole 
state of things described, an opposite view may in part at 
least correct this also. But it should be remembered that 
for the mere outline of events, which is all that we need for 
many portions of history, all historians are trustworthy; the 
difficulty does but relate to details, and occurs therefore but 
rarely ; for, as I have said before, it is absolutely impossible 
to study the mass of history in detail, we must be contented 
to know the mere heads of it, and to reserve minute inquiries 
into it for the time when we shall have some particular call 
to study it. 

After all, history presents to many minds an unsatisfactory 
aspect, because it is a perpetual study of particulars, without 
any certainly acknowledged law ; and though our know- 
ledge of general laws may here, as well as in natural 
science, be drawn from an induction of particular instances, 
yet it is not in natural science required of every student to 
go through this process for himself; the laws have been 
found out for him by others, and to these his attention u 



LECTURE VIII. 385 

directed. Whereas in history, the laws of the science are 
kept out of sight, perhaps are not known, and he is turned 
adrift, as it were, on a wide sea, to navigate it as he best 
can, and take his own soundings and make his own surveys. 

Now allowing the great beauty and interest of history as a 
series of particular pictures, not by any means barren in 
matter for reflection, but in the highest degree rich and in- 
structive ; transcending all the most curious details of natu- 
ral history, in the ratio of man's superiority over the brute 
creation ; yet I think that we must confess and deplore that 
its scientific character has not been yet sufficiently made 
out ; there hangs an uncertainty about its laws which to 
most persons is very perplexing. Why is it for example 
that we here, holding in common, as we certainly do, our 
principles of religious and moral truth, should yet regard 
political questions so differently ? that the history of our own 
great civil war, for instance, reads to different persons so 
different a lesson, so that we cannot touch upon it without 
being sure to encounter a strong opposition to whatever 
opinions we may maintain respecting it? (13) It is very 
true that some of this opposition may arise from simple ig- 
norance, and then the study of the history may modify or 
remove it ; but let a man read, if it be possible, every exist- 
ing document relating to the facts of those times, and is it 
quite certain that his conclusions will be precisely the same 
with tliose of another man who may have gone through the 
same process ? History, therefore, does not seem to be suf- 
ficient to the right understanding of itself; its laws, which, 
as it seems, ought to be established from its facts, appear, 
even with a full knowledge of the facts before us, to be yet 
infinitely disputable. 

I confess that if I believed them to be as really disputable 
as they have been disputed, the pain of such a conviction 
would be most grievous to bear. I am firmly persuaded, on 

33 



386 LECTURE vin. 

the contrary, that setting out with those views of man vvhicl\ 
we find in the Scriptures, and with those plain moral notions 
which the Scriptures do not so mucli teach as suppose to 
exist in us, and sanction ; the laws of history, in other words, 
the laws of political science, using " political" in the most 
exalted sense of the terra, as expressing the highest •TroXjrixi^ 
of the Greek philosophers, may be deduced, or, if you will, 
may be confirmed from it with perfect certainty, with a cer- 
tainty equal to that of the most undoubted truths of morals. (14) 
And if in this or in any former lectures I have seemed to 
express or to imply a very firm conviction on ^points which I 
well know to be warmly disputed, it is because these laws 
being to my own mind absolutely certain, the lessons of any 
particular portion of history, supposing that the facts are 
known to us, appear to be certain also ; and daily experience 
can scarcely remove my wonder at finding they do not appeal 
so to others. 

That they do not appear so, however, is undoubtedly a 
phenomenon to be accounted for. And hard as it is, almost 
I think impossible, to doubt conclusions which seem both in 
the way by which we arrived at them originally, and in their 
consistency with one another, and in their offering a key to 
all manner of difficulties, and in their never having met with 
any objection which we could not readily answer, to com- 
mand absolutely our mind's assent ; still I allow, that if they 
convinced no minds but ours, or if being generally disputed 
or doubted, we could in no way account satisfactorily for the 
fact of such a doubt respecting them, we should be driven to 
the extremity of scepticism ; truth would appear indeed to 
be a thing utterly unreal or utterly unattainable. Now on 
tlie contrary, what appear to me to be the laws of history, 
contain in them no single paradox ; there is no step in the 
process by which we arrive at them which is not absolutely 
confirmed by the sanction of the highest authorities ; and the 



LECTURE VIII. 387 

doubt respecting them appears to arise partly because men 
have not always viewed them in combination with one an- 
other, in which state one modifies another, and removes or 
lessens what might appear strange in each separately ; and 
partly because in regarding any one period of history, oui 
perception of the general law is obscured by circumstances 
which interfere with its regular operation, and thus lead many 
to doubt its existence. 

But in speaking of the certainty of the laws of political 
science I mean only that there are principles of government, 
undoubtedly good in themselves, and tending to the happi- 
ness of mankind ; and that whenever these principles appear 
not to have produced good, it is owing to some disturbing 
causes which may be clearly pointed out, or to the absence 
of something which was their proper consequence, and the 
omission of which in its season left them without their natural 
fruit ; but that although the principles may thus be impeded 
by "untoward circumstances, or fail to bring forth their con- 
sequences in any given case, as it is not every blossom which 
is succeeded by its fruit, yet they are an essential condition 
of the birth of fruit, and to oppose them, instead of furthering 
and perfecting their work, and helping to make them fruitful, 
is merely to uphold what is bad ; so that there is on one side', 
it may be, an ineffectual, or even an abused good, on the 
other hand there is a positive evil. 

But one great question still remains ; if history has its 
laws, as I entirely believe ; if theoretically considered it is 
not a mere aggregation of particular actions or characters, 
like the anecdotes of natural history, but is besides this the 
witness to general moral and political truths, and capable, 
when rightly used, of bringing to our notice fresh truths 
which we might not have gained by a priori reasoning only ; 
still, it may be asked, is this theoretical knowledge available ? 
Can the truths which it teaches us to value be really carried 



388 ' LECTURE VIII. 

into effect practically, or are we rather cursed with that bitter 
thing, a powerless knowledge, seeing an evil from which we 
cannot escape, and a good to which we cannot attain ; (15J 
being in fact embarked upon the rapids of fate, which hurry 
us alono- to the top of the fall, and then dash us down below ; 
while all the while, there are the banks on the right and left 
close in sight, an assured and visible safety if we could but 
reach it, but we try to steer and to pull our boat thither in 
vain ; and with eyes open, and amidst unavailing struggles, 
we are swept away to destruction? This is the belief of 
some of no mean name or ability ; who hold that the destiny 
of the present and future was fixed irrevocably by the past, 
and that the greatest efforts of individuals can do nothing 
against it, nay, that they are rather disposed by an overruling 
power to be apparently the instruments in bringing it to pass. 
While others hold that great men can control fate itself, that 
there is an energy in the human will which can as it were 
restore life to the dead ; and snap asunder the links of the 
chain of destiny, even when they have been multiplied around 
us by the toil of centuries. 

Now practically there is an end of this question altogether, 
if the power of this supposed fate goes so far as to make us 
its willing instruments ; I mean, if the influences of our time, 
determined themselves by the influence of a past time, do in 
their turn determine our characters ; if we admire, abhor, 
hope, fear, desire, or flee from, the very objects and no others 
which an irresistible law of our condition sets before us. 
For to ask whether a slave who loves his chains can break 
them, is but an idle question • because it is certain that he 
will not. And if we in like manner think according to a 
fixed law, viewing things in our generation as beings born in 
such a generation must view them, then it is evident that our 
deliverance must proceed wholly from a higher power ; be- 
fore the outward bondage can be broken, we must be set at 



LECTURE VITI. 389 

liberty within. The only question which can be of import- 
ance to us is this, whether, if our minds be free, our actions 
can compass what we desire ; whether, perceiving the influ- 
ence of our times, and struggling against it, we can resist it 
with success ; whether the natural consequences of the mis- 
doings of past generations can be averted now, or whether 
such late repentance be unavailing. 

And here surely the answer is such as we should most 
desire to be the true one ; an answer encouraging exertion, 
yet making the responsibility of every generation exceedingly 
great, and forbidding us to think that in us or in our actions 
is placed the turning power of the fortunes of the world. I 
do not suppose that any state of things can be conceived so 
bad as that the efforts of good men, working in the faith of 
God, can do nothing to amend it ; yet on the other hand, the 
evil may be far too deeply rooted to be altogether removed ; 
nor would it be possible for the greatest individual efforts to 
undo the effect of past errors or crimes, so that it should be 
the same thing whether they had ever been committed or no. 
It has been said, Conceive Frederick the Great in the place 
of Louis the Sixteenth on the morning of the 10th of August, 
1792, and would not the future history of the Revolution 
have been altogether different ? But the more reasonable 
case to conceive would be rather, that Louis the Sixteenth 
had been endowed, not on that one day of the 10th of August; 
but from his early youth, with the virtue and firmness of 
Louis the Ninth, together with the genius of Frederick or of 
Napoleon. What would have been the difference in the his. 
tory of France then ? That there would have been a great 
difference I doubt not, yet were the evils such as no human 
virtue and wisdom could have altogether undone. No livina 
man could have removed that deep suspicion and abhorrence 
entertained for the existing church and clergy which made 
the people incredulous of all virtue in an individual priest 



890 LECTURE VIII. 

because they were so fully possessed with the impression of 
the falsehood and evil of the system. Nor, in like manner, 
could any one have reconciled the peasants throughout 
France to the landed proprietors ; the feeling of hatred waa 
become too strong to be appeased, because here too it was 
mixed with intense suspicion, the result inevitably of suffering 
and ignorance, and nothing but the overthrew of those against 
whom it was directed, could have satisfied it. (16) Yet high 
virtue and ability in the king would have in all probability 
both softened the violence of the convulsion, and shortened 
its duration ; and by saving himself from becoming its victim, 
there would have been one at hand with acknowledged 
authority and power to reconstruct the frame of society not 
only sooner but better than it was reconstructed actually ; 
and the monarchy at least, among the old institutions of 
France, would have retained the love of the people, and 
would have been one precious link to connect the present 
with the past, instead of all links being severed together, and 
old France being separated by an impassable gulf from the 
new. 

A greater accuracy as to the determining of this question, 
does not seem to be attainable. We know that evil com- 
mitted is in certain cases, and beyond a certain degree, irre- 
mediable ; I do not say, not to be palliated or softened as to 
its consequences, but not to be wholly removed. And we 
know also that the blessing of individual goodness has been 
felt in very evil times, not only by itself, but by others. 
What, or what amount of evil is incurable, or how widely or 
deeply individual good may become a blessing amidst pre- 
vailing evil, we are not allowed to determine or to know. 
God's national judgments are spoken of in Scripture both as 
reversible and irreversible ; for Ahab's repentance the threat- 
ened evil was delayed, yet afterwards the cup of Judah's sin 
was so full, that the reward of Josiah's goodness was his own 



LECTURE VIII. 301 

being early taken away from the evil to come, not the rever- 
sal nor even the postponement of the sentence against his 
country. Surely it is enough to know that our sin now may 
render unavailing the greatest goodness of our posterity ; our 
eiforts for good may be permitted to remove, or at any rate 
to mitigate, the curse of our fathers' sin. 

Here then the present introductory course of lectures shall 
close. There is in all things a compensation whether of 
good or evil ; and as the subject of modern history is of all 
others to my mind the most interesting, inasmuch as it in- 
cludes all questions of the deepest interest relating not to 
human things only, but to divine, so the intermixture of evil 
is, that for this very reason it is of all subjects the most deli- 
cate to treat of before a mixed audience. Sharing: thus much 
in common with religious subjects, that no man feels himself 
to be a mere learner in it, but also in many respects a judge of 
what he hears, it has this farther difficulty, that the preacher 
speaking to members of the same church with himself speaks 
necessarily to men whose religious opinions in the main agree 
with his own ; but he who speaks on modern history, even to 
members of the same nation and commonwealth, speaks to 
those whose political opinions may differ from his own very 
deeply, who therefore are sure not only to judge what they 
hear, but to condemn it. And however much, when provoked 
by opposition, we may even feel pleasure in stating our opin- 
ions in their broadest form, yet he must be of a different consti- 
tution of mind from mine, who can like to do this unprovoked, 
who can wish, in the discharge of a public duty in our own 
common University, to embitter our academical studies with 
controversy, to excite angry feelings in a place where he has 
never met with any thing but kindness, a place connected in 
his mind with recollections, associations, and actual feelings, 
the most prized and most delightful. Only, it must be re- 
membered, that if modern history be studied at all, he who 



392 LECTirRE Vlli. 

speaks upon it officially, must speak as he would do on any 
other matter, simply and fully ; expounding it according to 
his ability and convictions ; not disguising or suppressing 
what he believes to be necessary to the right understanding 
of it, although it may sometimes cost him a painful effort. 
But in the lectures which I would propose to deliver next 
year, our business will be less embarrassing. We shall then 
be engaged with a remote period, wher-e the forms of our 
present parties were unknown ; and our object will be to 
endeavour to represent to ourselves the England of the 
fourteenth century. To represent it, if we can, even in its 
outward aspect ; for I cannot think that the changes in the 
face of the country are beneath the notice of history : what 
supplied the place of the landscape which is now so farailiai 
to us ; what it was before five hundred years of what I may 
call the wear and tear of human dominion ; when cultivation 
had scarcely ventured beyond the valleys, or the low sunny 
slopes of the neighbouring hills ; and whole tracts nov/ 
swarming with inhabitants, were a wide solitude of forest or 
of moor. To represent it also in its institutions, and its 
state of society ; and farther, in its individual men and in 
their actions ; for I would never wish the results of history 
to be separated from history itself: the great events of past 
times require to be represented no less than institutions, or 
manners, or buildings, or scenery : we must listen to the stir 
of gathering war ; we must follow our two Edwards, the 
second and third, on their enterprises visited with such dif- 
ferent fortune ; we must be present at the route and flight of 
B.annockburn, and at the triumph of Crecy. (17) Finally, 
we must remember also not so to transport ourselves into the 
fourteenth century as to forget that we belong really to the 
nineteenth ; that here, and not there, lie our duties ; that the 
harvest gathered in the fields of the past, is to be brought 
home for the use of the present ; avoiding the fault of tliat 



LECTURE VIII. 393 

admirable painter of the middle ages, M. de Barante, who, 
having shown himself most capable of analyzing history 
philosophically, and having described the literature of France 
in the eighteenth century in a work not to be surpassed for 
its mingled beauty and profoundness, (18) has yet chosen in 
his history of the Dukes of Burgundy, to forfeit the benefits 
of his own wisdom, and has described the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries no otherwise than might have been done by 
their own simple chroniclers. An example, one amongst a 
thousand, how men in their dread of one extreme, the ex- 
treme in this case of writing mere discussions upon history 
instead of history itself, are apt to fall into another not less 
distant from the true mean. 

The experience of this year has given me the most en- 
couraging assurance that the subject of modern history is 
felt to be full of interest. Those who study it for themselves, 
will certainly find its interest grow upon them ; it will not 
then be perilled, to apply an expression of Thucydides,* 
upon the capacity of a lecturer, according as he may lecture 
with more or less of ability and knowledge. (19) For we 
here are not likely to run away with the foolish notion, that 
lectures can teach us a science without careful study of our 
own. They can but excite us to begin to work for ourselves; 
Dossibly they may assist our efforts ; they can in no way 
■supersede them. 

* IT. 85. 



NOTES 

TO 

LECTURE VIII. 



Note 1.— Page 372. 

In the History of Rome, Dr. Arnold writes as follows, on the 
JiiFerence between the poetical legends and the wilful falsehoods 
of the Roman family memoirs : 

# * t« But before we finally quit the poetical legends of the early 
Roman history, the last of them and not the least beautiful, that 
which relates to the fall of Veii, must find its place in this narra- 
tive. In the life of Camillus there meet two distinct kinds of fic- 
tion, equally remote from historical truth, but in all other respects 
most opposite to one another, the one imaginative but honest, 
playing it is true with the facts of history, and converting them 
into a whole different form, but addressing itself also to a different 
part of the mind ; not professing to impart exact knowledge, but to 
delight, to quicken, and to raise the perception of what is beautiful 
and noble : the other, tame and fraudulent, deliberately corrupting 
truth in order to minister to national or individual vanity, pretend- 
ing to describe actual events, but substituting in the place of reality 
the representations of interested or servile falsehood. To the 
former of these classes belongs the legend of the fall of Veii ; to the 
latter the interpolation of the pretended victory of Camillus over 
the Gauls. The stories of the former kind, as innocent as they are 
delightful, I have thought it an irreverence to neglect : the fabri- 
cations of the latter sort, which are the peculiar disgrace of Roman 
history, it is best to pass over in total silence, that they may if pos- 
sible be consigned to perpetual oblivion " 

Vol. i. ch. xviii. p. 395. 

A train of thought somewhat similar to that which occurs in the 
first part of the text of this Lecture, and which had elsewhere been 



NOTES TO LECTUilE VIII. 395 

& subject of reflection to Dr. Arnold in his study of the legends of 
tlaman History, will be found in the following passages from the 
' Lives of the English Saints ;' 

* * When " so much has been said and believed of a number of 
Saints with so little historical foundation. It is not that we may 
lawfully despise or refuse a great gift and benefit, historical testimony, 
and the intellectual exercises which attend on it, study, research, 
and criticism ; for in the hands of serious and believing men they 
are Dt the highest value. We do not refuse +hem, but in the cases 
in question, we have them not. The bulk of Christians have them 
not ; the multitude has them not ; the multitude forms its view of 
the past, not from antiquities, not critically, not in the letter ; but it 
develops its small portion of true knowledge into something which 
is like the very truth though it be not it, and which stands jTor the 
truth when it is but like it. Its evidence is a legend ; its facts are 
a symbol ; its history a representation ; its drift is a moral. 

" Thus then is it with the biographies and reminiscences of the 
Saints. ' Some there are which have no memorial, and are as 
though they had never been ;' others are known to have lived and 
died,v and are known in little else. They have left a name but they 
have left nothing besides. Or the place of their birth, or of their 
abode, or of their death, or some one or other striking incident of 
their life, gives a character to their memory. Or they are known by 
martyrologies or services, or by the traditions of a neighbourhood, 
or by the title or the decorations of a Church. Or they are known 
by certain miraculous interpositions which are attributed to them. 
Or their deeds and sufferings belong to countries far away, and the 
report of them comes musical and low over the broad sea. Such 
are some of the small elements which, when more is not known, 
faith is fain to receive, love dwells on, meditation unfolds, disposes, 
and forms ; till by the sympathy of many minds, and the concert 
of many voices, and the lapse of many years, a certain whole figure 
is developed with words and actions, a history and a character — 
rhich is indeed but the portrait of the original, yet is, as much as a 
portrait, an imitation rather than a copy, a likeness on the whole, 
but in its particulars more or less the work of imagination. It is 
but collateral and parallel to the truth ; it is the truth under assumed 
conditions ; it brings out a true idea, vet by inaccurate or defective 



696 „ , NOTES 

means of exhibition, ftf*"saf burs of the age, yei ?t is the offspring 
from what is spiritual and everlasting. It is the picture of a, saint, 
who did o^herigniracles if not these ; pj!vK0^;9?eRt through sufferings, 
who wrought righteousness, who died. Jtn faith and peace — of this 
we are sure ; we aremjtr«m'&,^shOuld it so happen, of the when, 
the where, ihe how, the why, and the whence. * * * 
. * * " The author of a marvellous Life may be proved to a de- 
monstration to be an ignorant, credulous monk, or a literary oi 
ecclesiastical gossip ; to be preaching to us his dreams, or to have 
saturated himself with popular absurdities ; he may be cross-exam- 
ined, and made to contradict himself; or his own story, as it stands, 
may be self-destructive ; and yet he may ^e the index of a hidden 
fact, and may symbolize a history to which he does not testify. 

* * " The Lives of the Saints are not so much strict biographies 
as myths, edifying stories compiled from tradition, and designed 
not so much to relate facts, as to produce a religious impression on 
the mind of the hearer. Under the most favourable circumstances, 
it is scarcely conceivable that uninspired men could write a faithful 
history of a miraculous life. Even ordinary history, except mere 
annals, is all more or less fictitious ; that is, the facts are related, 
not as they really happened, but as they appeared to the writer ; as 
they happened to illustrate his views or support his prejudices. 
And if this is so of common facts, how much more so must it be 
when all the power of the marvellous is thrown in to stimulate the 
imagination. But to see fully the difficulties under which the 
writers of these Lives must have laboured, let us observe a few of 
the ways in which we all, and time for us, treat the common his- 
tory and incidents of life, 

" First ; we all write legends. Littl'e as we may be conscious 
of it, we all of us continually act on the very same principle, 
which made the Lives of Saints such as we find them ; only per- 
haps less poetically. 

" Who has not observed in himself, in his ordinary dealings with 
ihe facts of every day life, with the sayiugs and doings of his ac- 
quaintance, in short, with every thing which comes before him as a 
fact, a disposition to forget the real order in which they appear, 
and re-arrange them according to his theory of how they ought to 
be ■* Do we hear of a generous self-denying action, in a short time 



TO LECTURE VIII. 397 

tlie real doer and it are forgotten ; it has become the property of 
the noblest person we know : so a jest we relate of the wittiest 
person, frivolity of the most frivolous, and so on ; each particular 
act we attribute to the person we conceive most likely to have been 
the author of it. And this does not arise from any wish to leave a 
false impression, scarcely from carelessness ; but only because facts 
refuse to remain bare and isolated in our memory; they will 
arrange themselves under some law or other ; they must illus- 
trate something to us — some character, some principle — or else 
we forget them. Facts are thus perpetually, so to say, becoming 
unfixed and re-arranged in a more conceptional order. In this 
way, we find fragments of Jewish history in the legends of Greece, 
stories from Herodotus become naturalized in the tradition of early 
Rome ; and the mythic exploits of the northern heroes, adopted by 
the biographers of our Saxon kings. So, uncertain traditions of 
miracles with vague descriptions of name and place, are handed 
down from generation to generation, and each set of people, as they 
pass into their minds, naturally group them round the great central 
figure of their admiration or veneration, be he hero or be he saint. 
And so with the great objects of national interest. Alfred — ' Eng- 
land's darling' — the noblest of the Saxon kings, became mythic 
almost before his death ; and forthwith, every institution that Eng- 
lishmen most value, of law or church, became appropriated to him. 
He divided England into shires ; he established trial by jury ; he 
destroyed wolves and made the country so secure, that golden 
bracelets hung untouched in the open road. And when Oxford was 
founded, a century was added to its age ; and it was discovered 
that Alfred had laid the first stone of the first college, and that St. 
Neot had been the first Professor of Theology." 

Lives of the English Saints, No. IV., 'Hermit Saints,' pp. 3, 62, and 74 

Note 2.— Page 372. 

The story is told, I believe, of the Abbe Vertot. Southey, ii. 
one of his Essays, tells it of a " French historian," without giving 
a name. It may be that Vertot gets the credit of it from the othei 
story told of him — that when offered some additional and unpub- 
lished materials for his History of the Siege of Rhodes, he replied, 
'.' Mon si^ge est fait." 



398 NOTES 

Note 3.— Page 373. 

* * " Time in another way plays strange tricks with facts, anc2 
is ever altering, shifting, and even changing their nature in oiu 
memory. Every man's past life is becoming mythic to him ; we 
cannot call up again the feelings of our childhood, only we know 
that w^hat then . seemed to us the bitterest misfortunes, we have 
since learnt by change of character or circumstance, to think very 
great blessings ; and even when there is no change, and were they 
to recur again, they are such as we should equally repine at, yet by 
mere lapse of time sorrow is turned to pleasure, and the shujrpest 
pang at present becomes the most alluring object of our retrospect. 
The sick-bed, the school trial, loss of friends, pain and grief of 
every kind, become rounded off, and assume a soft and beautiful 
grace. ' Time dissipates to shining aether the hard angularity of 
facts ;' the harshest of them are smoothed and chastened off in the 
past like the rough mountains and jagged rocks in the distant hori- 
zon. And so it is with every other event of our lives ; read a let- 
ter w^e wrote ten years ago, and how impossible we find it to recog- 
nise the writer in our altered selves. Incident after incident rises 
up and bides its day, and then sinks back into the landscape. It 
changes by distance, and we change by age. While it was present 
it meant one thing, now it means another, and to-morrow perhaps 
something else on the point of vision alters. Even old Nature, 
endlessly and patiently reproducing the same forms, the same beau- 
ties, cannot reproduce in us the same emotions we remember in our 
childhood. Then all was Fairy-land ; now time and custom havo 
deadened our sense, and 

The things which we have seen, we now can see no more. 

This is the true reason why men people past ages with the superhu- 
man and the marvellous. They feel their own past was indeed some- 
thing miraculous, and they cannot adequately represent their feel- 
ings except by borrowing from ar other order of beings. 

" Thus age after age springs up, and each succeeds to the inher- 
itance of all that went before it ; but each age has its own feelingS; 
its ow^n character, its own necessities ; therefore, receiving the ac- 
cumulations of literature and history, it absorbs, and fuses, and re- 



TO LECTURE VIII. 399 

hiodels them to meet the altered circumstances. The histories of 
Greece and Rome are not yet exhausted ; every new historian finds 
something more in them. Alcibiades and Catiline are not to us 
■what they were to Thucydides and Sallust, even though we use 
their eyes to look at them. So it has been with facts, and so it al- 
ways shall be. It holds with the lives of individuals ; it holds with 
histories, even where there is contemporary writing, and mucjji 
more than either, where, as with many of the Lives of the Saints, 
we can only see them as they appeared through the haze of several 
generations, with no other light but oral tradition." 

Lives of the English Saints, No. IV.. ' Hermit Saints,' p. 78. 

Note 4. — Page 376. 

The want of trustworthiness in the two great military auto-his" 
lorians of ancient and modern times, Caesar and Napoleon, has been 
strongly commented on in the ^Histoire de VArt Militaire,'' by Car- 
rion-Nisas, an officer who served with considerable distinction in 
the French cavalry in the Peninsular war, and whose work, I am 
informed, is esteemed for its professional value. He places the 
fairness of Turenne's military memoirs in fine contrast with those 
of both Caesar and Napoleon : 

" On admire surtout dans les Memoires de Turenne la candeur 
de ses aveux ; c'est surtout en ce point qu'il differe de Cesar ; et il 
est effectivement curieux de voir avec quel detail Turenne sembls 
se plaire a faire remarquer toutes ses fautes et les positions dange- 
reuses oil elles le jeterent. Dans le recit de I'affiiire malheureuse 
de Mariendhal, tantot il s'accuse de trop defacilite k permettre une 
mesure qui rendoit les cantonnemens de la cavalerie plus commodes, 
mais plus hasardeux ; tantot il denonce sa propre resolution prise 
i'%alapropos ; il ne dissimule pas que toute son infanterie etoit per- 
due ; il se peint comme reduit, par sa faute, k fuir presque seul, et 
sur le point d'etre pris. Au milieu de ce desordre naivement ra- 
conte, il excuse M. de Rosen d'avoir engage I'affaire, et ne manqua 
pas de dire que ce general, qui fut fait prisonnier, avoit tres-bien 
fait son devoir ; enfin, il se charge seul de tout le blame d'une 
affaire desastreuse." To this the author adds, in a note, — " Quelle 
difference de cette franchise, de cette naivete de Turenne, de cet 
amour de la verite sans bornes et sans reticence, avec la subtile ar- 



100 NOTES 

gumentation, Fegoisme opiniatre, les tours de force de Napoleon, 
pour persuader au monde ce qui n'a jamais ete vrai d'aucun mortel, 
en aucun temps ; savoir, qu'il n'a jamais commis une faute dans ce 
qu'il a fait, une erreur dans ce qu'il a Hit ! On trouve bien quelque 
chose de cette intention de Napoleon dans les Commentaires de 
Cesar, mais avec bien plus d'art, de gout et de sobriete." 
^ Tome II , p. 101-2 

Again, in the same volume, p. 645, with reference to the St. He- 
lena Memoirs, the author remarks : " Napoleon denature tellement 
les faits, qu'il faut attribuer sa maniere de les presenter ou a une 
presomption extreme, et qui est la folie meme dont il etoit affecte, 
ou k un pur mensonge qui seroit trop au-dessous de Napoleon." 

An earlier writer on military science, Puysegur, in his ''Art de la 
Guerre,^ (a work in which there is much solicitude to refute the er- 
ror noticed by Arnold, that the lessons of ancient warfare are use- 
less to the modern soldier,) draws the same contrast between Caesar 
and Turenne ; and it is remarked in the treatise quoted above. " II 
n'est pas etonnant que Puysegur, si bien fait pour apprecier la ve- 
racite et la candeur de Turenne, ait ete un pen repousse par les ar- 
tifices continuels de Cesar, que sous leur voile de simplicite Puy- 
segur apercevoit tres bien." I. 604. And in the Appendix 
(ii. 615) he dwells upon this admirable integrity and candour of 
Lewis the Fourteenth's great Marshal : " On ne sauroit trop revenir 
sur ce trait singulier de son caractere. Turenne disoit de Rithel 
et de Mariendhal, ' J'y fus battu par ma faute,' et entrant sans re- 
pugnance dans ses details, ' Si je voulais,' ecrit il, ' me faire justice 
un peu severement, je dirois que I'affaire de Mariendhal est arrivee 
pour m'etre laisse aller mal-a-propos a I'importunite des Allemands, 
qui demandoient des quartiers ; et que celle de Rithel est venue 
pour m'etre trop fie k la lettre du gouverneur, qui promettoit de tenir 
quatre jours la veille meme qu'il se rendit. Je fus, dans ces occa- 
sions, trop credule et trop facile ; mais quand un homme rCa pas 
fait de f antes a la guerre^ il ne I'a pas faite long-temps.' Ainsi 
cette admirable franchise etoit encore de la profondeur d'observa- 
•tion." 

The best reputation which has since been gained by a soldier and 
aistorian, for that historic truthfulness and candour in the narrative 



TO LECTURE VIII. 401 

of his own campaigns, which appears to have distinguished Taronnc, 
IS that which has been secured by the Archduke Charles. Mr. Ali- 
son, speaking of the history of the German campaigns, remarks : 
" Mihtary history has few more remarkable works of which to boast. 
Luminous, sagacious, disinterested, severe in judging of himself, in- 
dulgent in criticising the conduct of others ; liberal of praise to all 
but his own great achievements, profoundly skilled in the military 
art, and gifted with no common powers of narrative and description, 
his work is a model of candid and able military disquisition. Less 
vehement and forcible than Napoleon, he is more circumspect and 
consistent ; with far inferior genius, he is distinguished by infinitely 
greater candour, generosity, and trustworthiness. On a fact stated 
by the Archduke, whether favourable or adverse to his reputation, 
or a criticism made by him on others, the most perfect reliance may 
be placed." ^ Hist, of Europe,^ ch. 29, note. Of the high merit 
of the military authorship of the Archduke still more substantial 
proof is found in the impartial respect rendered to his works by such 
eminent professional French authority as Jomini and Dumas ; the 
former having considered it an honourable task to translate and an- 
notate them, and the latter recognising their standard authority. — ■ 
Appendix to the 5th vol. of the ' Precis des Evenemens Mili- 
taires.^ 

As one of the class of military histories, referred to in this note, 
the Duke of Berwick's Memoirs (' Memoires de Berwick'') may 
also be mentioned as an accurate *and trusty record of his own 
campaigns. I state this character of the work, not from my own 
knowledge, but because it is so spoken of by Lord Mahon in his 
* History of the War of the Succession in Spain.' He frequently 
cites the Memoirs among his authorities, and refers to them (chap, 
iii.) as ' written with great frankness and simplicity, and affording 
some of the best materials for the War of the Succession.' 

Note 5.— Page 377. 

Li the sketch of the state of Greece in early times, with which 
riiucydides introduces his history, he laments the uncertainty that 
is produced by the facility with which men receive traditional hear- 
say without putting the truth of it to the test — aiiaaaviurwi. AftfJi 



402 NOTES 

editing several examples of historical errors, he deplores that there 
should be so great and so general indolence — carelessness in the 
search after truth, such reluctance to have any trouble about it, 
and the readiness vi^ith w^hich men betake themselves, with lazy 
credulity and want of earnestness, to whatever chances to be ready 

for them — oZtwi; araXai-rrwpog rols iroWols h ^^Tm^S rijs akrjQda^, Kai hi rd 
iTo1p.a fjaXXov rpiftovTat. 

Note 6.— Page 381. 

This sentence appears to me so completely to describe the style of 
Mr. Macauley, that his brilliant review-essays may be said to ex^ 
emplify Dr. Arnold's reflection. It is the predominance of such a 
style that has exposed him to this criticism by a fellow-reviewer— 
" Mr. Macauley, pointed and brilliant, but sacrificing every thing 
to the object of immediate display, insomuch that one would hardly 
gather from his writings that he believed truth to have existence " 
B}^it. Critic : Article on Mill's Logic. 

Note 7.— Page 381. 

Coleridge has insisted upon " the importance of accuracy of style 
as being near akin to veracity and truthful habits of mind." ' Lit. 
Remains\ i. 241. And of the author of these Lectures it has been 
well said, " Arnold's style is worthy of his manly understanding, and 
the noble simplicity of his character." ' Guesses at Truth,'' p. 289. 

Note 8.— Page 382. 

* * " What his (Arnold's) general admiration for Niebuhr was 

as a practical motive in the earlier part of his work, that his deep 

aversion to Gibbon, as a man, was in the latter part. ' My highest 

ambition,' he said, as early as 1826, ' and what I hope to do as far 

as I can, is to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this 

respect, — that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low 

morality, is hostile to religion, without speaking directly against it ; 

so my greatest desire would be, in my History, by its high morala 

and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually 

bringing it forward:' " 

* Life and Correspondence,' chap. iv. 



TO LECTURE VIII. 403 



Note 9.— Pao^e ^82. 



" Nothing shows more clearly the great rarity of geogra|. hical 
talent, than the praise which has been commonly bestowed on Poly- 
Mu3 as a good geographer. He seems indeed to have been aware 
of the importance of geography to history, and to have taken 
considerable pains to gain mformation on the subject : but this 
very circumstance proves the more the difficulty of the task ; for 
his descriptions are so vague and imperfect, and so totally devoid 
of painting, that it is scarcely possible to understand them. For 
instance, in his account of the march c.f the Gauls into Italy, and 
of the subsequent movements of their army and of the Romans, 
there is an obscurity which never could have existed, had he con- 
ceived in his own mind a lively image of the seat of war as a whole, 
of the connection of the rivers and chains of mountains with each 
other, and of the consequent direction of the roads and most fre- 
quented passes. * * * 

" The question in what direction this famous march (Hannibal's 
passage across the Alps) was taken, has been agitated for more 
than 1800 years, and who can undertake to decide if? The diffi- 
culty to modern inquirers has been chiefly from the total absence 
of geographical talent in Polybius. That this historian indeed should 
ever have gained the reputation of a good geographer, only proves 
how few there are who have any notion what a geographical in- 
stinct is. Polybius indeed laboured with praiseworthy diligence to 
become a geographer ; but he laboured against nature ; and the un- 
poetical character of his mind has in his writings actually lessened 
the accuracy, as it has totally destroyed the beauty of history. To 
any man who comprehended the whole character of a mountain 
country, and the nature of its passes, nothing could have been easier 
than to have conveyed at once a clear idea of Hannibal's route, by 
naming the valley by which he had ascended to the main chain, and 
afterwards that which he followed in descending from it. Or ad- 
mitting that the names of barbarian rivers would have conveyed 
little information to Greek readers, still the several Alpine valleys 
have each their peculiar character, and an observer with the least 
power of description could have given such lively touches of the 
varying scenery of the march, that future travellers must at once 



404 NOTES 

have recognised»his description. Whereas the account of Polybiua 
is at once so unscientific and so deficient in truth and liveliness of 
painting, that persons who have gone over the several Alpine passes 
for the very purpose of identifying his descriptions, can still rea- 
sonably doubt whether they were meant to apply to Mont Genevre, 
or Mont Cenis, or to the Little St. Bernard." 

History of Rome, vol. iii , notes F and L. 

* * * " How bad a geographer is Polybius, and how strange that 
he should be thought a good one ! Compare him with any man who 
is really a geographer, with Herodotus, with Napoleon, — whose 
sketches of Italy, Egypt, and Syria, in his memoirs, are to me un- 
rivalled, — or with Niebuhr, and how striking is the difference. The 
dullness of Polybius's fancy made it impossible for him to conceive 
or paint scenery clearly, and how can a man be a geographer with- 
out lively images of the formation and features of the country which 
he describes ? How different are the several Alpine valleys, and 
how would a few simple touches of the scenery which he seems 
actually to have visited, yet could neither understand nor feel it, 
have decided for ever the question of the route ! (Hannibal's.) Now 
the account suits no valley well, and therefore it may be applied to 
many." * * * 

' Life and Correspondence j' letter ex., Septem. 21, 1835 

Note 10.— Page 382. 

" Nothing shows more forcibly the unrivalled truth of the narra 
tive of Thucydides than to contrast it, as we have here an oppor- 
tunity of doing, with that of an ordinary historian such as Diodorus 
Siculus. For instance, Thucydides, well aware of the studied 
secrecy observed in such matters by the Lacedaemonian government, 
does not pretend to state the number of the Spartan land forces 
employed at the siege of Pylus. Diodorus, however, states it with- 
out hesitation, at ' twelve thousand.' The soldiers sent over to 
Sphacteria were, according to Thucydides, drafted by lot from the 
several Lochi ; Diodorus, to enhance the glory of the Athenians, 
represents them as 'picked men, chosen for their valour.' The 
siege of Pylus, Thucydides tells ns, lasted during one whole day 



TO LECTURE VIII. 405 

and part of the next : Diodorus carries it on through ' several days.' 
Lastly, the heroic courage of Brasidas, and his bold though unsuc- 
cessful attempt to force a landing, are told hy Thucydides with 
equal force and simplicity ; while Diodorus, in his clumsy endea- 
vours to exalt the effect of the story, makes it only ridiculous : for 
he describes Brasidas as repelling a host of enemies, and killing 
many of the Athenians in single combat, before he was disabled. 
No wonder that we hear complaints of the uncertainty Ci" history, 
when such a writer as Diodorus is only a fair specimen of by far 
the majority of those whom the world has been good-natured enough 
to call historians." 

Arnold's 'Thucydides,'' vo.. ii. r>. 15, Note- 

* * a This simple statement, when contrasted with the exaggera- 
tion of Cornelius Nepos, serves admirably to show the difference be- 
tween a sensible man who loved truth, and the careless folly of that 
most worthless class of writers, the second and third-rate historians 
of Greece and Rome. Thucydides says that ' Themistocles learnt 
as much of the Persian language as he could ;' Cornelius Nepos 
tells us, that he became so perfectly master of it, ' ut multo com- 
modius dicatur apud regem verba fecisse, quam hi poterant qui in 
Perside erant nati.' " 

Ih. vol. i. p. 165. Note. 

•'The whole of this chapter (on the Battle in the Harbour of 
Syracuse and defeat of the Athenians) has been copied by Dion 
Cassius nearly word for word, and applied to his own account of 
the naval victory gained by M. Agrippa, over the fleet of Sex. 
Pompeius in Sicily, in the year of Rome 718. It was a strange 
taste to embellish a history with borrowed descriptions, which of 
course could only suit in their general outline the actions to which 
they were thus transferred. But this indifference to fidelity of de- 
tail, and this habit of dressing up an historical picture, as some 
artists dress up their sketches from nature, has produced effects of 
no light importance in corrupting first history itself, and then the 
taste of readers of history." 

Ih. vol. iii. p. 235. Nolo 



406 NOTES 

Note 11.— Page 382. 

* * " I hold the lines, ' Nil admirari, &c.,' to be as utterly false 
as any moral sentiment ever uttered. Intense admiration is neces- 
sary to our highest perfection, &c." 

' Life and Correspondence^ Letter Ixvii. July 15, 1833. 

" * * "I believe that ' Nil admirari,' in ^his sense, is the Devil's 
favourite text ; and he could not choose a better to introduce his 
pupils into the more esoteric parts of his doctrine. And therefore 
I have always looked upon a man infected with this disorder of 
anti-romance, as on one who has lost the finest part of his nature, 
and his best protection against every thing low and foolish." * * 

Ih. Letier c. March 30, 1835 

Note 12.— Page 384. 

" it might seem ludicrous to speak of impartiality in writing the 
history of remote times, did not those times really bear a nearer 
resemblance to our own than many imagine ; or did not Mitford's 
example sufficiently prove that the spirit of modern party may affect 
our view of ancient history. But many persons do not clearly see 
what should be the true impartiality of an historian. If there be 
no truths in moral and political science, little good can be derived 
from the study of either ; if there be truths, it must be desirable 
that they should be discovered and embraced. Scepticism must ever 
be a misfortune or a defect : a misfortune, if there be no means of 
arriving at truth ; a defect, if while there exist such means we are 
unable or unwilling to use them. Believing that political science 
has its truths no less than moral, I cannot regard them with indif- 
ference, I cannot but wish them to be seen and embraced by others. 

" On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that these truths 
have been much disputed ; that they have not, like moral truths., 
received that universal assent of good men which makes us shrink 
from submitting them to question. And again, in human affairs, 
the contest has never been between pure truth and pure error. 
Neither then may we assume political conclusions as absolutely 
certain ; nor are political truths ever wholly identical with the pro 
fessions or practice of any party or individual. If for the sake ot 



TO LECTURE VIII 407 

recommending any principle, we disguise the errors or the crimes 
with which it has been in practice accompanied^ and which in the 
weakness of human nature may perhaps be naturally connected 
with our reception of it, then we are guilty of most blameable par- 
tiality. And so it is no less, if for the sake of decrying an erro- 
neous principle, we depreciate the wisdom, and the good and noble 
feelings with which error also is frequently, and in some instances 
naturally joined. This were to make our sense of political truth 
to overpower our sense of moral truth ; a double error, inasmuch 
as it is at once the less certain ; and to those who enjoy a Chris- 
tian's hope, by far the less worthy. 

" While then I cannot think that political science contains no 
truths, or that it is a matter of indifference whether they are be- 
lieved or no, I have endeavoured also to remember, that be they 
ever so certain, there are other truths no less sure ; and that one 
truth must never be sacrificed to another. I have tried to be strict- 
ly impartial in my judgment of men and parties, without being in- 
different to those principles which were involved more or less purely 
in their defeat or triumph. I have desired neither to be so possessed 
with the mixed character of all things human, as to doubt the exist- 
ence of abstract truth ; nor so to dote on any abstract truth, as to 
think that its presence in the human mind is incompatible with any 
evil, its absence incompatible with any good." 

History of Rome, Preface, vol. i. p. x 

" * * History, a science, whose real difficulties, uncertainties, 
and perplexities are every day more clearly seen, and of which we 
predict that it will be one triumph achieved by the present genera- 
tion, that its real nature will be more fully understood. It is getting 
more and more to be perceived, that the historian requires not merely 
a profound, accurate, and most miscellaneous knowledge of facts ; not 
merely a great measure of what is commonly called ' knowledge of 
the world,' by which is meant an ever-energizing insight into the mo- 
tives of action, the sentiments, the habits, the tendencies of the crowd 
of ordinary men, (though this is indeed indispensable ;) if he is to be 
really such, he needs much more than this ; he needs even more 
absolutely a deep and penetrating knowledge of the innermost re- 
cesses of the human heart. The real movers of great events are 



408 NOTES 

ordinarily great men ; he must have then a glowing appreciation 
and hearty sympathy for greatness ; he must be able to recognise, 
understand, and assign to its due place in the scene of life the ec- 
centricities of genius, the waywardness of keen sensibility. Then 
the subtle influence of mind upon mind, the process whereby national 
character is formed, or again whereby each several age is distin- 
guished b}^ that assemblage of notions ajid instincts peculiar to it- 
self, which by so universal and felicitous a figure is called its 
atmosphere ; this is closely connected with the deepest metaphy- 
sical problems, and yet meets the historian at every step, as one 
of the very principal facts which claim his recognition, comprehen- 
sion, and explanation. But in ecclesiastical history, the powers of 
mind he requires are even rarer, by how much he has to do with a 
more unfathomable element, and with phenomena less open to the 
ordinary view. Who shall analyze the secret communings of the 
holy and mortified soul with its God 1 Yet of this kind are the ma- 
terials which have even the principal share in those events, which 
are the objects of his science." 

* British Critic,'' vol. xxxiii. p. 217. Jan. 1843. 

Note 13.— Page 385. 

Yet of that period of history Coleridge was able to take a more 
catholic view, when he said, " I know of no portion of history which 
a man might write with so much pleasure as that of the great 
struggle in the time of Charles 1., because he may feel the pro- 
foundest respect for both parties. The side taken by any particular 
person was determined by the point of view which such person 
happened to command at the commencement of the inevitable col- 
lision, one line seeming straight to this man, another line to another. 
No man of that age saw the truth, the whole truth ; there was not 
light enough for that. The consequence, of course, was a violent 
exaggeration of each party for the time." ' Table Talk,'' ii. 171. 
May, 1833. 

Note 14.— Page 386. 
Ft is remarked by Aristotle (' CEcon.'' ch. 1) that some arts are 



TO LECTURE VII [. 409 

wholly distinct, with reference to construction and use, such as the 
making a musical instrument and the performing on it ; but that politics 
comprehends both the framing a constitution, and the administration 

of it — Tijf Sf noXiTiK^g lari^ Kai noXcv f| dpx^S (TiKTTrjffaaOai, Kal v-iTapxovff>] XP^' 

jaaOai /caXwj. And again, {^Polit.^ iii. 9,) that political society is 
not mere living together, but communion for happiness and virtue 

— rd ^fiV tviai/Jidviag Kal kuAwj" t€>v KaXuJv apa ■Kpd^ewv X'^P'" deriov eivai ttjv 
toXiTtKtjfV KoivcaviaVy aXX' ov rov (Tv^rjv. 

See also note to ' Appendix to Inaugural Lecture,' p. 90. 



Note 15.— Page 388. 

Dr. Arnold here gives the substance of ihat ' saying of the Per- 
sian fatalist' — ixSicTrj 51 666vri fort tSv iv av9p(x>i:oiai avrrj, rroXXa (ppoviovra ftij- 

5svbs Kparieiv — which was SO often in his mouth, and which expressed 
a solicitude so habitual and characteristic, that his biographer re- 
marks that it " might stand as the motto of his whole mind," (ch. ix.) 
It is found in Herodotus, (' Calliope'' 16,) who relates that when 
Mardonius was encamped in Boeotia, before the battle of Plataea, he 
and fifty of his officers were invited to meet the same number of 
rhebans at a banquet, at which they reclined in pairs, a Persian 
and a Theban upon each couch. During the entertainment one of 
the Persians with many tears predicted to his Theban companion 
the speedy and utter destruction of the invading army ; and, when 
asked why he used no influence with Mardonius to avert it, he 
answered — " That which God hath determined, it is impossible for 
man to turn aside ; for when one would give faithful counsel, nobody 
is willing to believe him. Although many of us Persians are aware 
of the end we are coming to, we still go on, because we are bound 
io our destiny ; and this is the very bitterest of a man's griefs, to 
see clearly but to have no power to do any thing at all." 

Note 16.— Page 390. 

* * " It has been well said that long periods of general suffering 
make far less impression on our minds, than the short sharp strugr 
gle in which a few distinguished individuals perish ; not that we 
over-estimate the horror and the guilt of times of open bloodshed- 



410 NOTES 

ding, but we are much too patient of the greater misery and greatej 
sin of periods of quiet legalized oppression ; of that most deadly of 
all evils, when law, and even religion herself, are false to their di- 
vine origin and purpose, and their voice is no longer the voice of 
God, but of his enemy. In such cases the evil derives advantage, 
in a manner, from the very amount of its own enormity. No pen 
can record, no volume can contain the details of the daily and 
hourly sufferings of a whole people, endured without intermission, 
through the whole life of man, from the cradle to the grave. The 
mind itself can scarcely comprehend the wide range of the mis- 
chief : how constant poverty and insult, long endured as the natural 
portion of a degraded caste, bear with them to the sufferers some- 
thing yet worse than pain, whether of the body or the feelings ; how 
they dull the understanding and poison the morals ; how ignorance 
and ill-treatment combined are the parents of universal suspicion ; 
how from oppression is produced habitual cowardice, breaking out 
when occasion offers into merciless cruelty ; how slaves become 
naturally liars ; how they, whose condition denies them all noble 
enjoyments, and to whom looking forward is only despair, plunge 
themselves, with a brute's recklessness, into the lowest sensual 
pleasures ; how the domestic circle itself, the last sanctuary of hu- 
man virtue, becomes at length corrupted, and in the place of natural 
affection and parental care, there is to be seen only selfishness and 
unkindness, and no other anxiety on the part of the parents for their 
children, than that they may, by fraud or by violence, prey in their 
turn upon that society which they have found their bitterest enemy. 
Evils like these, long working in the heart of a nation, render their 
own cure impossible : a revolution may execute judgment on one 
generation, and that perhaps the very one whi ?h was beginning to 
see and to repent of its inherited sins ; but it cannot restore life to the 
morally dead ; and its ill success, as if in this line of evils no cursa 
bhould be wanting, is pleaded by other oppressors as a defence of 
their own iniquity, and a reason for perpetuating it for ever." 

History of Rome, vol. ii., p. 19. 



Note 17.— Page 392. 
" The siege of Orleans is one of the turning points in the history 



TO LECTURE Vill. 411 

vOf nations. Had the English dominion in France been established, 
no man can tell what might have been the consequence to England, 
which would probably have become an appendage to France. So 
little does the prosperity of a people depend upon success in war, 
that two of the greatest defeats we ever had have been two of our 
greatest blessings, Orleans and Bannockburn. It is curious, too, 
that in Edward IL's reign the victory over the Irish proved our 
curse, as our defeat by the Scots turned out a blessing. Had the 
Irish remained independent, they might afterwards have been united 
to us, as Scotland was ; and had Scotland been reduced to subjec- 
tion, it would have been another curse to us, like Ireland."* 

«* "Bannockburn," Dr. Arnold used to say, "ought to be celebrated by Englishmen 
as a national festival, and Athunree lamented as a national judgment." 

^Life and Correspondence,^ Appendix C, No. IX. 



Note 18.— Page 393. 

The little volume on the literature of France during the eigh* 
leenth century, by M. de Barante, appears to have been a favourite 
book with Dr. Arnold : he made some use of it as a text-book in 
Rugby School. The other reference in the Lecture is to the 
' Melanges Histyriques et Litteraires^ of the same author. 

Note 19.— Page 393. 

It is the expression put into the mouth of Pericles, when, in the 
exordium of his funeral oration, he speaks of the risk in honouring the 
dead by words — that the memory of their virtues may be endan- 
gered — depending for fame or discredit upon one man, whether ho 

speak well or ill, — nh h m avSpl noWSv aperas Kivhvvtitadai £? re <aH 
\tX^ov tliT6vTi ici(TTev6iivai, 



APPENDIX. 



No. 1. 

(See p 63, Note 14 to ' Inaugural Lectwe.') 

Mr. Stanley has given, in chapter iv. of the ' Life and Carre- 
ipondencej a faithful and judicious character of Dr. Arnold as an 
historian — a student and writer of history, and I introduce it here, 
in illustration of these Lectures : 

" His early fondness for history grew constantly upon him : he 
delighted in it, as feeling it to be ' simply a search after truth, 
where, by daily becoming more familiar with it, truth seems for 
evermore within your grasp :' the images of the past were habitu- 
ally in his mind, and haunted him even in sleep, with a vividness 
which would bring before him some of the most striking passages 
in ancient history — the death of Caesar, the wars of Sylla, the siege 
of Syracuse, the destruction of Jerusalem — as scenes in which he 
was himself taking an active part. What objects he put before 
him, as an historian, may best be judged from his own view of the 
province of history. It was, indeed, altogether imperfect, in his 
judgment, unless it was not only a plan but a picture ; unless it repre- 
sented ' what men thought, what they hated, and what they loved ;' 
unless it ' pointed the way to that higher region, within which she 
herself is not permitted to enter ;'* and in the details of geographical 
or military descriptions he took especial pleasure, and himself re- 
markably excelled in them. Still it was in the dramatic faculty on 
the one hand, and the metaphysical faculty on the other hand, that 
he felt himself deficient ; and it is accordingly in the political 
rather than in the philosophical or biographical department of his- 
tory — in giving a combined view of different states or of different 
periods — in analyzing laws, parties, and institutions, that his cliief 
merit consists. 

* History of Rome, vol. i. p. 98; vol. it. p. 173. 



il4 APPENDIX. 

" What were his views of Modern History will appear in the 
mention of his Oxford Professorship. But it was in ancient his- 
tory that he naturally felt the greatest delight. ' I linger round a 
subject, which nothing could tempt me to quit but the conscious- 
ness of treating it too unworthily,' were his expressions of regret, 
when he had finished his edition of Thucydides ; ' the subject of 
what is miscalled ancient history, the really modern history of the 
civilization of Greece and Rome, which has for years interested me 
so deeply, that it is painful to feel myself, after all, so unable to 
paint it fully.' His earliest labours had been devoted not to Roman 
but to Greek history ; and there still remains amongst his MSS. a 
short sketch of the rise of the Greek nation, written between 1820 
and 1823, and carried down to the time of the Persian wars. And 
in later years, his edition of Thucydides, undertaken originally with 
the design of illustrating that author rather historically than philo- 
logically, contains in its notes and appendices, the most systematic 
remains of his studies in this direction, and at one time promised 
to embody his thoughts on the most striking periods of Athenian 
history. Nor, after he had abandoned this design, did he ever lose 
his interest in the subject ; his real sympathies (if one may venture 
to say so) M^ere always with Athens rather than with Rome ; some 
of the most characteristic points of his mind were Greek rather 
than Roman ; from the vacancy of the early Roman annals he was 
forever turning to the contemporary records of the Greek common- 
wealths, to pay ' an involuntary tribute of respect and affection to old 
associations and immortal names, on which we can scarcely dwell 
too long or too often ;' the falsehood and emptiness of the Latin 
historians were for ever suggesting the contrast of their Grecian 
rivals ; the two opposite poles in which he seemed to realize his 
ideas of the worst and the best qualities of an historian, with feel- 
ings of personal antipathy and sympathy towards each, were liivy 
and Thucydides. 

" Even these scattered notices of what he once hoped to have 
worked out more fully, will often furnish the student of Greek his- 
tory with the means of entering upon its most remarkable epochs 
under his guidance. Those who have carefully read his works, or 
ihared his instructions, can still enjoy the light which he has thrown 
on the rise and progress of the Greek commonwealths, and tlieii 



APPENDIX. 415 

analogy with the States of modern Europe ; and apply, in theii 
manifold relations, the principles which he has laid down with re- 
gard to the peculiar ideas attached in the Greek world to race, to 
citizenship, and to law. They can still catch the glow of almost 
passionate enthusiasm, with which he threw himself into the age 
of Pericles, and the depth of emotion with which he watched, like 
an eye-witness, the failure of the Syracusan expedition. They can 
etill trace the almost personal sympathy with which he entered into 
the great crisis of Greek society, when ' Socrates, the faithful 
servant of truth and virtue, fell a victim to the hatred alike of the 
democratical and aristocratical vulgar ;' when ' all that audacity can 
dare, or subtlety contrive, to make the words of ' good' and ' evil' 
change their meaning, was tried in the days of Plato, and by his 
eloquence, and wisdom, and faith unshaken, was put to shame.' 
They can well imagine the intense admiration, with which he 
would have dwelt in detail, on what he has now left only in faint 
outline. Alexander at Babylon impressed him as one of the most 
solemn scenes in all history; the vision of Alexander's career, even 
to the lively image which he entertained of his youthful and god- 
like beauty, rose constantly before him as the most signal instance 
of the effects of a good education against the temptations of power ; 
as being beyond any thing recorded in Roman history, the career 
of ' the greatest man of the ancient world ;' and even after the 
period, when Greece ceased to possess any real interest for him, 
he loved to hang with a melancholy pleasure over the last decay of 
Greek g 3nius and wisdom — ' the worn-out and cast-ofF skin, from 
which the living serpent had gone forth to carry his youth and 
vigour to other lands.' 

" But, deep as was his interest in Grecian history, and though in 
some respects no other part of ancient literature derived so great a 
light from his researches, it was to his History of Rome that he 
Icoked as the chief inonument of his historical fame. Led to it 
partly by his personal feeling of regard towards Niebuhr and Cheva- 
lier Bunsen, and by the sense of their encouragement, there was, 
moreover, something in the subject itself peculiarly attractive to 
him, whether in the magnificence of the field which it embraced-— 
(* the History of Rome,' he said, ' must be in some sort the History 
of the World,') — or in the congenial element which he naturall3f 



416 APPENDIX, 

found in the character of a people, ' whose distingTiishing quality 
was their love of institutions and order, and their reverence foi 
law.' Accordingly, after approaching it in various forms, he at last 
conceived the design of the work, of which the three publishe(? 
volumes are the result, but which he had intended to carry down, 
in successive periods, to what seemed to him its natural termina- 
tion in the coronation of Charlemagne. (Pref. vol. i. p. vii.) 

^' The two earlier volumes occupy a place in the History of Rome, 
and of the ancient world g^enerally, which in England had not and 
has not been otherwise filled up. Yet in the subjects of which they 
treat, his peculiar talents had hardl}'' a fair field for their exercise. 
The want of personal characters and of distinct events, which Nie- 
buhr was to a certain extent able to supply from the richness of his 
learning and the felicity of his conjectures, was necessarily a disad- 
vantage to an historian whose strength lay in combining what was 
already known, rather than in deciphering what was unknown, and 
whose veneration for his predecessor made him distrustful not only 
of dissenting from his judgment, but even of seeing or discovering 
more than had been by him seen or discovered before. 'No man,' 
as he said, ' can step gracefully or boldly when he is groping his 
way in the dark,' (Hist. Rome, i. p. 133,) and it is with a melan- 
choly interest that we read his complaint of the obscurity of the 
.subject : ' I can but encourage myself, whilst painfully feeling my 
way in such thick darkness, with the hope of arriving at last at the 
light, and enjoying all the freshness and fulness of a detailed con- 
temporary history.' (Hist. Rome, ii. p. 447.) But the narrative 
of the second Punic war, which occupies the third and posthumous 
volume, both as being comparatively unbroken ground, and as af- 
fording so full a scope for his talents in military and g-eographical 
descriptions, may well be taken as a measure of his historical 
powers, and has been pronounced by its editor. Archdeacon Hare, 
to be the first history which 'has given any thing like an adequate 
representation of the wonderful g^enius and noble character of Han- 
nibal.' With this volume the work was broken off: but it is im- 
possible not to dwell for a moment on what it would have been had 
he lived to complete it. 

" The outline in his early articles in the Encyclopaedia Metropoli- 
tana, of the later history of the Civil Wars. ' a subject so glorious, 



APPENDIX. 417 

he writes in 1824, * that I groan beforehand when I think how cer- 
tainly I shall fail in doing it justice,' provokes of itself the desire to 
see how he would have gone over the same ground again with his 
added knowledge and experience — how the characters of the time, 
which even in this rough sketch stand out more clearly than in any 
other English work on the same period, would have been repro- 
duced — how he would have represented the pure* character and 
military genius of his favourite hero, Pompey — or expressed his 
mingled admiration and abhorrence of the intellectual power and 
moral degradation of Caesar ; how he would have done justice to 
the coarseness and cruelty of Marius, ' the lowest of democrats' — 
or amidst all his crimes, to the views of ' the most sincere of Aris- 
tocrats,' Sylla. And in advancing to the farther times of the Empire, 
his scattered hints exhibit his strong desire to reach those events, 
to which all the intervening volumes seemed to him only a prelude. 
' I would not overstrain my eyes or my faculties,' he writes in 
1840, ' but whilst eyesight and strength are yet undecayed, I want 
to get through the earlier Roman History, to come down to the 
Imperial and Christian times, which form a subject of such deep 
interest.' What his general admiration for Niebuhr was as a prac- 
tical motive in the earlier part of his work, that his deep aversion 
to Gibbon, as a man, was in the latter part. ' My highest ambition,' 
he said, as early as 1826, ' and, what I hope to do as far as I can, is 
to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this respect — that 
whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile 
to religion, without speaking directly against it ; so my greatest 
desire would be, in my History, by its high morals and its general 
tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forward.' 

* It may be necessary (especially since the recent publication of Niebuhr's Lee 
tures, where a very different opinion is advocated) to refer to Dr. Arnold's own esti- 
mate of the moral character of Pompey, which, it is believed, he retained unaltered, 
in the Encyc. Metrop. ii. 252. The following extract from a letter of General Napiei 
may not be. without interest in confirmation of an opinion which he had himself 
formed independently of it. " Tell Dr. Arnold to beware of falling into the error of 
Pompey being a bad general ; he was a very great one, perhaps in a purely military 
sense greater than Caesar." At the same time it should be observed, that his admi- 
ration of Caesar's intellectual greatness was always very strong, and it was almos* 
with an indignant animation that, on the starting of an objection that Caesar a' victo- 
ries were only gained over inferior enemies, he at once denied the inference, and 
Instantly recounted campaign after campaign in refutation. 



118 APPENDIX. 

" There would have been the place for his unfolding the rise ol 
the Christian Church, not in a distinct ecclesiastical history, but as 
he thought it ought to be written, in conjunction with the history 
of the world. ' The period from Augustus to Aurelian,' he writes 
as far back as 1824, ' I will not willingly give up to any one, be- 
cause I have a particular object, namely, to blend the civil and re- 
ligious history together more than has ever yet been done.' There 
he would, on the one hand, have expressed his view of the external 
influences, which checked the free growth of the early Church — 
the gradual revival of Judaic principles under a Christian form — 
the gradual extinction of individual responsibility, under the system 
of government, Roman and Gentile in its origin, which, according 
to his latest opinion, took possession of the Church rulers from the 
time of Cyprian. There, on the other hand, he would have dwelt 
on the self-denying zeal and devotion to truth, which peculiarly 
endeared to him the very name of Martyr^ and on the bond of 
Christian brotherhood, which he delighted to feel with such men 
as Athanasius and Augustine, discerning, even in what he thought 
their weaknesses, a signal testimony to the triumph of Christianity, 
unaided by other means, than its intrinsic excellence and holiness 
Lastly, with that analytical method, which he delighted to pursue 
in his historical researches, he would have traced to their source 
' those evil currents of neglect, of uncharitableness, and of igno- 
rance, whose full streams we now find so pestilent,' first, ' in the 
social helplessness and intellectual frivolousness' of the close of the 
Roman empire ; and then, in that event which had attracted his 
earliest interest, ' the nominal conversion of the northern nations to 
Christianity — a vast subject, and one of the greatest importance 
both to the spiritual and temporal advancement of the nations of 
Europe, (Serm. vol. i. p. 88,) as explaining the more confirmed 
separation of clergy and laity in later times, and the incomplete in- 
fluence which Christianity has exercised upon the institutions even 
3f Christian countries.' (Serm. vol. ii. pref. p. xiv )" 



APPENDIX. ilD 

No. II. 

(See p. 63, note 14 to ' Inaugural Lecture.') 

On Historical Instruction. 

*' * * * In the statement of the business of Rugby school which 
has been given above, one part of it will be found to consist of works 
of modern history. An undue importance is attached by some per- 
sons to this circumstance, and those who would care little to have 
their sons familiar with the history of the Peloponnesian war are de- 
lighted that they should study the Campaigns of Frederic the Great 
or of Napoleon. Information about modern events is more useful, 
they think, than that which relates to antiquity ; and such informa- 
tion they vdsh to be given to their children. 

*' This favourite notion of filling boys with useful information is 
'ikely, we think, to be productive of some mischief. It is a carica- 
ture of the principles of inductive philosophy, which, while it taught 
the importance of a knowledge of facts, never imagined that this 
knowledge was of itself equivalent to wisdom. Now it is not so 
much our object to give boys * useful information,' as to facilitate 
their gaining it hereafter for themselves, and to enable them to turn 
it to account when gained. The first is to be effected by supplying 
them on any subject with a skeleton which they may fill up here- 
after. For instance, a real knowledge of history in after life is 
highly desirable ; let us see how education can best facilitate the 
gaining of it. It should begin by impressing on a boy's mind the 
names of the greatest men of different periods, and by giving him a 
notion of their order in point of time, and the part of the earth on 
which they lived. This is best done by a set of pictures bound up 
together in a volume, such, for instance, as those which illustrated 
Mrs. Trimmer's little histories, and to which the writer of this ar- 
ticle is glad to acknowledge his own early obligations. Nor could 
better service be rendered to the cause of historical instruction than 
by publishing a volume of prints of universal history, accompanied 
with a very short description of each. Correctness of costume in 
such prints, or good taste in the drawing, however desirable if they 
can be easily obtained, are of very subordinate importance ; the 
great matter is that the print should be striking, and full enough to 



i20 APPENDIX. 

sxcite and to gratify curiosity. By these means a lasting associa- 
tion is obtained with the greatest names in history, and tlie most 
remarkable actions of their lives : while their chronological arrange- 
ment is learnt at the same time from the order of the pictures ; a 
boy's memory being very apt to recollect the place which a favourite 
print holds in a volume, whether it comes towards the beginning, 
middle, or end, what picture comes before it, and what follows it. 
Such pictures should contain as much as possible the poetry of his- 
tory ; the most striking characters, and most hercic actions, whether 
of doing or of suffering ; but they should not embarrass themselves 
with its philosophy, with the causes of revolutions, the progress of 
society, or the merits of great political questions. Their use is of 
another kind, to make some great name, and great action of every 
period, familiar to the mind ; that so in taking up any more detailed 
history or biography, (and education should never forget the im- 
portance of preparing a boy to derive benefit from his accidental 
reading,) he may have some association with the subject of it, and 
may not feel himself to be on ground wholly unknown to him. He 
may thus be led to open volumes into which he would otherwise 
have never thought of looking : he need not read them through — 
indeed it is sad folly to require either man or boy to read through 
every book they look at, but he will see what is said about such and 
such persons or actions ; and then he will learn by the way some- 
thing about other pe'sons and other actions ; and will have his stock 
of associations increased, so as to render more and more informa- 
tion acceptable to him. 

" After this foundation, the object still being rather to create an 
appetite for knowledge than to satisfy it, it would be desirable to 
furnish a boy with histories of one or two particular countries, 
Greece, Rome, and England, for instance, written at no great 
length, and these also written poetically much more than philo- 
sophically, with much liveliness of style, and force of painting, so 
as to excite an interest about the persons and things spoken of. The 
absence o^ all instruction in politics or political economy, nay even 
an absolute erroneousness of judgment in such matters, provided 
always that it involves no wrong principle in morality, are compara- 
tively of slight importance. Let the boy gain, if possible, a strong 
appetite for knowledge to begin with ; it is a later part of education 



APPENDIX. 421 

which should enable him to pursue it seusibly, and to make it, when 
obtained, wisdom. 

" But should his education, as is often the case, be cut short by 
circumstances, so that he never receives its finishing lessons, will 
he not feel the want of more direct information and instruction in its 
earHer stages 1 The answer is, that every thing has its proper sea- 
son, and if summer be cut out of the year, it is vain to suppose that 
tlie work of summer can be forestalled in spring. Undoubtedly, 
much is lost by this abridgement of the term of education, and it 
is well to insist strongly upon the evil, as it might, in many in- 
stances, be easily avoided. But if it is unavoidable, the evil conse- 
quences arising from it cannot be prevented. Fulness of knowledge 
and sagacity of judgment are fruits not to be looked for in early 
youth ; and he who endeavours to force them does but interfere with 
the natural growth of the plant, and prematurely exhaust its vigour. 

" In the common course of things, however, where a young per- 
son's education is not interrupted, the later process is one of exceed- 
ing importance and interest. Supposing a boy to possess that outline 
of general history which his prints and his abridgements will have 
given him, with his associations, so far as they go, strong and lively, 
and his desire of increased knowledge keen, the next thing to be done 
is to set him to read some first-rate historian, whose mind was 
formed in, and bears the stamp of some period of advanced civili- 
zation, analogous to that in which we now live. In other words, 
tif. should read Thucydides or Tacitus, or any writer equal to thorn, 
if sucn can be found, belonging to the third period of full civiliza- 
tion, that of modern Europe since the middle ages. The particular 
subject of the history is of little moment, so long as it be taken 
neither from the barbarian, nor from the romantic, but from the phi- 
losophical or civilized stage of human society ; and so long as the 
writer be a man of commanding mind, who has fully imbibed the 
influences of his age, yet without bearing its exclusive impress. 
And the study of such a work under an intelligent teacher becomes 
indeed the key of knowledge and of wisdom : first it affords an ex- 
ample of good historical evidence, and hence the pupil may be 
taught to notice from time to time the various criteria of a credible 
narrative, and by the rule of contraries to observe what are the in- 
dications of a testimony questionable, suspicious, or worthless. Un- 



122 APPENDIX. 

due scepticism may be repressed by showing- how generally truth 
has been attained when it has been honestly and judiciously sought ; 
while credulity may be checked by pointing out, on the other hand, 
how manifold are tha errors intg^wliich those are betrayed whose 
intellect or w^hose principles have been found wanting. Now too 
the time is come when the pupil may be introduced to that high 
philosophy which unfolds the ' causes of things.' The history with 
which he is engaged presents a view of society in its most advanced 
state, when the human mind is highly developed, and the various 
crises which affect the growth of the political fabric are all over- 
past. Let him be taught to analyze the subject thus presented to 
him ; to trace back institutions, civil and religious, to their origin ; 
to explore the elements of the national character, as now exhibited 
in maturity, in the vicissitudes of the nation's fortune, and the moral 
and physical qualities of its race ; to observe how the morals and 
the mind of the people have been subject to a succession of in- 
fluences, some accidental, others regular ; to see and remember 
what critical seasons of improvement have been neglected, — what 
besetting evils have been wantonly aggravated by wickedness or 
folly. In short, the pupil may be furnished as it were with certain 
formulae, which shall enable him to read all history beneficially ; 
which shall teach him v/hat to look for in it, how to judge of it, and 
how to apply it. 

" Education will thus fulfil its great business, as far as regards 
the intellect, to inspire it with a desire of knowledge, and to fur- 
nish it with power to obtain and to profit by what it seeks for. 
And a man thus educated, even though he knows no history in de- 
tail but that which is called ancient, will be far better fitted to enter 
on public life, than he who could tell the circumstances and the 
date of every battle and every debate throughout the last century ; 
whose information, in the common sense of the term, about modern 
history, might be twenty times more minute. The fault of systems 
of classical education in some instances has been, not that they did 
not teach modern history, but that tbey did not prepare and dispose 
their pupils to acquaint themselves with it afterwards ; not that 
they did not attempt to raise an impossible superstructure, but that 
they did not prepare the ground for the foundation, and put the raa« 
terials within reach of the builder. 



APPENDIX. 42*) 

"That Impatience, which is one of the diseases of the age, is in 
great danger of possessing the public mind on the subject of edu- 
cation ; an unhealthy restlessness may succeed to lethargy. Men 
are not contented with sowing the seed, unless they can also reap 
the fruit ; forgetting how often it is the law of our condition, — 
'that one soweth, and another reapeth.' It is no wisdom to make 
boys prodigies of information ; but it is our wisdom and our duty 
to cultivate their faculties each in its season — first the memory and 
imagination, and then the judgment; to furnish them with the 
means, and to excite the desire, of improving themselves, and to 
wait with confidence for God's blessing on the result." 

Dr. Arnold's Description of Rugby School, 

'Journal of Education,'' vol, vii. pp. 245-9. 

No. III. 

(See p. 142, note 1 to Lecture II.) 
On Translation. 

***** All this supposes, indeed, that classical instruction should 
be sensibly conducted ; it requires that a classical teacher should be 
fully acquainted with modern history and modern literature, no less 
than with those of Greece and Rome. What is, or perhaps w^hat 
used to be, called a mere scholar, cannot possibly communicate to 
his pupils the main advantages of a classical education. The know- 
ledge of the past is valuable, because without it our knowledge of 
the present and of the future must be scanty ; but if the knowledge 
of the past be confined wholly to itself; if, instead of being made 
to bear upon things around us, it be totally isolated from them, and 
so disguised by vagueness and misapprehension as to appear inca- 
pable of illustrating them, then indeed it becomes little better than 
laborious trifling, and they who declaim against it may be fully 
forgiven. 

" To select one instance of this perversion, what can be more ab- 
surd than the practice of what is called construing Greek and Latin, 
continued as it often is even with pupils of an advanced age 1 The 
study of Greek and Latin considered as mere languages, is of im- 
portance, mainly as it enables us to understand and employ well 



424 A.PPENDIX. 

that language in which we commonly think, and speak, and write. 
It does this, because Greek and Latin are specimens of language 
at once highly perfect and incapable of being understood without 
long and minute attention : the study of them, therefore, naturally 
involves that of the general principles of grammar ; while their 
peculiar excellences illustrate the points which render language 
clear, and forcible, and beautiful. But our application of this gen- 
eral knowledge must naturally be to our own language, to show us 
what are its peculiarities, what its beauties, what its defects ; to 
teach us by the patterns or the analogies offered by other lan- 
guages, how the effect which we admire in them may be produced 
with a somewhat different instrument. Every lesson in Greek oi 
Latin may and ought to be made a lesson in English. The trans- 
lation of every sentence in Demosthenes or Tacitus is properly an 
exercise in extem.poraneous English composition ; a problem, how 
to express with equal brevity, clearness, and force, in our own Ian 
guage, the thought which the original author has so admirably ex 
pressed in his. But the system of construing, far from assisting, is 
positively injurious to our knowledge and use of English ; it accus- 
toms us to a tame and involved arrangement of our words, and to 
the substitution of foreign idioms in the place of such as are na- 
tional ; it obliges us to caricature every sentence that we render, 
by turning what is, in its original dress, beautiful and natural, into 
something which is neither Greek nor English, stiff, obscure, and 
flat, exemplifying all the faults incident to language, and excluding 
every excellence. 

"The exercise of translation, on the other hand, meaning, by 
translation, the expressing of an entire sentence of a foreign Ian 
guage by an entire sentence of our own, as opposed to the render- 
ing separately into English either every separate word, or at most 
only parts of the sentence, whether larger or smaller, the exercise 
of translation is capable of furnishing improvement to students of 
every age, according to the measure of their abilities and know- 
ledge. The late Dr. Gabell, than whom in these matters there can 
be no higher authority, when he was the under-master of Win- 
shester College, never allowed even the lowest forms to construe ^ 
they always were taught, according to his expression, to read into 
English. From this habit even the youngest boys derived several 



APPENDIX. ' 42c 

jdvaiitages ; the meaning of the sentence was more clearly seen 
when it was read all at once in English, than when every clause 
or word of English was interrupted by the intermixture of patches 
of Latin ; and any absurdity in the translation was more apparent. 
Again, there was the habit gained of constructing English sentences 
upon any given subject, readily and correctly. Thirdly, with re- 
spect to Latin itself, the practice was highly useful. By being 
accustomed to translate idiomatically, a boy, when turning his own 
thoughts into Latin, was enabled to render his own natural English 
into the appropriate expressions in Latin. Having been always ac- 
customed, for instance, to translate ' quum venisset' by the particle 
* having come,' he naturally, when he wishes to translate ' having 
come,' into Latin, remembers what expression in Latin is equivalent 
to it. Whereas, if he has been taught to construe literally ' when he 
had come,' he never has occasion to use the English participle in his 
translations from Latin ; and when, in his own Latin compositions, 
he wishes to express it, he is at a loss how to do it, and not unfre- 
quently from the construing notion that a participle in one language 
must be a participle in another, renders it by the Latin participle 
passive ; a fault which all who have had any experience in boys' 
compositions must have frequently noticed. 

" But as a boy advances in scholarship, he ascends from the idio- 
matic translation of particular expressions to a similar rendering of 
an entire sentence. He may be taught that the order of the words 
in the original is to be preserved as nearly as possible in the trans- 
lation ; and the problem is how to effect this without violating the 
idiom of his own language. There are simple sentences, such as 
' Ardeam Rutuli habebant,' in which nothing more is required than 
to change the Latin accusative into the English nominative, and 
the active verb into one passive or neuter : ' Ardea belonged to the 
Rutulians.' And in the same way the other objective cases, the 
genitive and the dative, when they occur at the beginning of a 
sentence, may be often translated by the nominative in English, 
making a corresponding change in the voice of the verb foUovving. 
But in many instances also the nominative expresses so completely 
the principal subject of the sentence, that it is unnatural to put it 
into any other case than the nominative in the translation. ' Om- 
nium primum avidum novse libertatis populum, ne postmodum llecti 



t26 APPENDIX. 

precibus aut donis regiis posset, jurejurando adegit [Brutus] iiemi» 
nem Roma passuros regnare.' It will not do here to translate 
' adegit' by a passive verb, and to make Brutus the ablative case, 
because Brutus is the principal subject of this and the sentences 
preceding and following it ; the historian is engaged in relating his 
measures. To preserve, therefore, the order of the words, the 
clause ' avidum novas libertatis populum' must be translated as a 
subordinate sentence, by inserting a conjunction and verb. 'First 
of all, while the people were set so keenly on their new liberty, to 
prevent the possibility of their ever being moved from it hereafter 
by the entreaties or bribes of the royal house, Brutus bound them 
by an oath, that they would never suffer any man to be king at 
Rome.' Other passages are still more complicated, and require 
greater taste and command of language to express them properly ; 
and such will often offer no uninteresting trial of skill, not to the 
pupil only, but even to his instructor. 

"Another point may be mentioned, in which the translation of 
the Greek and Roman writers is most useful in improving a boy's 
knowledge of his own language. In the choice of his words, and 
in the style of his sentences, he should be taught to follow the 
analogy required by the age and character of the writer whom he 
is translating. For instance, in translating Homer, hardly any 
words should be employed except Saxon, and the oldest and simplest 
of those which are of French origin ; and the language should con- 
sist of a series of simple propositions, connected with one another 
only by the most inartificial conjunctions. In translating the trage- 
dians, the words should be principally Saxon, but mixed with many 
of French or foreign origin, like the language of Shakspeare, and 
the other dramatists of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. The 
term ' words of French origin' is used purposely, to denote that 
large portion of our language which, although of liatin derivation, 
came to us immediately from the French of our Norman conquer- 
ors, and thus became a part of the natural spoken language of that 
mixed people, which grew out of the melting of the Saxon and 
Norman races into one another. But these are carefully to be dis- 
tinguished from another class of words equally of Ijatin derivation, 
but which have been introduced by learned men at a much later 
period, directly from Latin books, and have never, properly speak- 



APPENDIX 427 

ing, formed any part of the genuine national language. These 
truly foreign words, which Johnson used so largely, are carefully 
to be shunned in the translation of poetry, as being unnatural, and 
associated only with the most unpoetical period of our literature, 
the middle of the eighteenth century. 

" So also, in translating the prose writers of Greece and Rome, 
Herodotus should be rendered in the style and language of the 
Chroniclers ; Thucydides in that of Bacon or Hooker, while De- 
mosthenes, Cicero, Caesar, and Tacitus, require a style completely 
modern — the perfection of the English language such as we now 
speak and write it, varied only to suit the individual differences of 
the different writers, but in its range of words and in its idioms, 
substantially the same. 

" Thus much has been said on the subject of translation, because 
the practice of construing has naturally tended to bring the exer- 
cise into disrepute : and in the contests for academical honours at 
both Universities, less and less importance, we have heard, is con- 
stantly being attached to the power of viva voce translation. We 
do not wonder at any contempt that is shown towards construing, 
the practice being a mere folly ; but it is of some consequence that 
the value of translating should be better understood, and the exer- 
cise more carefully attended to. It is a mere chimera to suppose, 
as many do, that what they call free translation is a convenient 
cover for inaccurate scholarship. It can only be so through the 
incompetence or carelessness of the teacher. If the force of every 
part of the sentence be not fully given, the translation is so far 
faulty ; but idiomatic translation, much more than literal, is an 
evidence that the translator does see the force of his original ; and 
it should be remembered that the very object of so translating is to 
preserve the spirit of an author, where it would be lost or weakened 
by translating literally ; but where a literal translation happens to 
be faithful to the spirit, there of course it should be adopted ; and 
any omission or misrepresentation of any part of the meaning of the 
original does not preserve its spirit, but, as far as it goes, sacrificea 
it, and is not to be called ^free translation,'' but rather 'imperfect, 
* blundering,' or, in a word, 'bad translation.' " 

Dr. Arnold's Description of Rugby School, 

' Journal of Education,' vol. vii. pp. 241-5. 



428 APPENDIX. 

The essential difficulty in the process of translation has been 
well stated by Mr. Newman, in the Preface to his " Church of the 
Fathers ;" 

" It should be considered that translation in itself is, after all. 
out a problem, how, two languages being given, the nearest approxi- 
mation may be made in the second to the expression of ideas al- 
ready conveyed through the medium of the first. The problem 
almost starts with the assumption that something must be sacrificed 
and the chief question is, what is the least sacrifice \ In a balance 
of difficulties, one translator will aim at being critically correct, 
and will become obscure, cumbrous, and foreign ; another will aim 
at being English, and will appear deficient in scholarship. While 
grammatical particles are followed out, the spirit evaporates ; and 
while ease is secured, new ideas are intruded, or the point of the 
original is lost, or the drift of the context broken." p. viii. 

On a subject of so much interest in education, I may add a re- 
ference to some judicious ' Remarks on Translation' by Mr. R. H. 
Home, in the third No. of the ' Classical Museum,'' Decern., 1843. 
The nature of true and false translation, is also examined and well 
exemplified, in an article on ' German and English Translators 
from the Greek,' \r the ''Foreign Quarterly Review^^ vol.*xxxiii. 
July, 1844. 



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